


take off your skin and dance around your bones

by janie_tangerine



Series: there's a devil lying by your side [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: (AS MUCH AS ROBB GETS DARK BUT HONESTLY), (I know these tags are suggesting everything but one but is2g THAT'S THE POINT), Alternate Universe - Demons, Alternate Universe - Horror, Alternate Universe - Magic, Bathing/Washing, Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Creepy Fluff, Dark Robb Stark, Dead Dove: Do Not Eat, Demon Deals, Demons, Dubious Morality, Eldritch, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Eventual Happy Ending, F/M, Gen, HONESTLY GUYS IT'S THE ONE TIME I WILL USE THAT TAG BUT I'M DEAD SERIOUS, Happy Halloween I guess, Hurt/Comfort, I Don't Even Know, I'm Going to Hell, IDEK HOW ELSE TO TAG IT I'M SORRY, Idiots in Love, Inappropriate Humor, Injury Recovery, Jon Snow's Terrible Horrible Not Good Very Bad Day, Kinktober 2018, M/M, Memory Loss, Mental Breakdown, Moral Dilemmas, Multi, Necromancy, Past Abuse, Past Character Death, Physical Abuse, Revenge, Rituals, Self-Sacrifice, Sharing a Bed, Succubi & Incubi, Suicide Attempt (mentioned/past), Tentacle Sex, Tentacles, The Author Regrets Everything, Triggers, WTFfic, Ygritte Being The Best tbqh, meaning that the frey pies are making a guest appearance in this i'm so sorry guys, minor/mentioned jaimebrienne and THAT OTHER JAIME SHIP IN THE BACKSTORY, plus surprise crackship because I can, probably, reverse Red Wedding, surprisingly wholesome demon-ing I suppose, the frey family is not having a good day either, the subplot with the least likely romcom trope in existence at least for this context
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-14
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-02 04:46:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 31,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16298435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janie_tangerine/pseuds/janie_tangerine
Summary: in which Theon starts working on helping Robb get his revenge and helps him out in more ways than just that.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lordhellebore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordhellebore/gifts).



> ... so. REMEMBER THAT TIME I wrote fic where Robb summoned demon!Theon to get revenge for his family's death?
> 
> HERE'S THE DAMNED SEQUEL TO IT WITH MORE OF ALL OF THAT including tentacle porn, questionable morals all around, the Jon/Ygritte fluff plotline (to be more explored in part two) and PROBLEMATIC CONTENT EVERYWHERE like guys this is legit the most questionable shit I ever wrote in my entire life and tbh the next part is more dead dove: do not eat than this one but I figured I'd make things clear. (You can thank ao3/tumblr user lordhellebore for indulging me some more with this gljdksgkjs.) You'll get further warnings when I post part two. And if you're warning why I'm posting #1 now it's because I still have the ending to go on the entire thing but today was tentacle porn day at kinktober AND I've had the tentacle porn in here written since, like, MONTHS, so I figured I'd just post this. Part two is definitely coming within Halloween it's like... 80% written anyway ;) Also: Lysa fans pls abstain I mean I haven't been the nicest to her in here but I needed a villain. Sorry. /o\
> 
> That said: they're GRRM's, nothing in here is mine bar the plot, don't ask me at what time this fic is supposed to be set it's PERIOD, this is totally still more or less influenced by me binging on the Johannes Cabal series last year, the title of this fic is from Tom Waits and the series's from Nick Cave again and... I'll REALLY saunter downwards now and not vaguely. Idk. ENJOY THE CREEPY FLUFF AND THE LACK OF MORALITY I GUESS.

“How in _hell_ do you even function?”

“I imagine that in order for you to say _that_ you must be impressed, aren’t you?”

Theon does laugh at Robb’s reply — fair point, all things considered —, but he can’t help thinking that for being a human, and a fairly young one at that, either he’s running on pure spite or he has to be tougher than most humans he’s run into, because after two days of sticking around the place and checking on his routine to get a feel of the real world all over again before Sunday comes and Robb has time to go over his revenge plans with him, he can say for sure that most people who summoned him in the centuries wouldn’t have lasted three days doing what _he_ does, never mind six months.

“Maybe I am,” Theon shrugs, as Robb pours himself some tea with sightly shaking hands. It’s ten in the evening and he’s obviously exhausted, but how would he _not_ be? “But honest, it was a compliment.”

“I don’t need compliments.”

“Let me tell you, no one who’s ever summoned me would’ve lasted with _your_ routine for longer than a week. Maybe I’d give them one month.”

Robb’s cheeks do flush a bit at that, as he takes his cup of tea and sits down on a chair for what’s probably the first time he’s done it _for himself_ since this morning.

His bosses be damned, he’s been here three days and _every_ single day Robb’s woken up sometime around five in the morning, ate something, spent about one hour getting some food and water into his very much unresponsive brother (technically he’s not, but if that’s how Robb thinks of him then Theon’s going to respect it), giving him a bath he definitely couldn’t appreciate and making sure he was dressed with clean things before moving him back to the bed. Then at six thirty he would knock at the neighbor’s door (a fairly attractive woman Theon wouldn’t have minded having a go with in another life, but she’s friends with Robb so she’s off limits, and anyway she’s not who he has on his mind right now) — she’s a seamstress whose house doesn’t face south-east but Robb’s does, so they have an agreement that she can go sew in his living room if she keeps an eye on Jon and makes sure he doesn’t break an arm falling off the bed or anything — and at six forty-five he would be at his workplace doing accounting. At lunch, he would go back upstairs to check on the situation with the neighbor — Ygritte — going back to hers to have food, he’d get some food into Jon again, then would go back downstairs when Ygritte showed up again. Then he would keep on working until eight in the evening when the shop closes, then he would go back upstairs, lock himself in the bathroom along with Jon (Theon hasn’t asked what he does in there, though he can imagine), come out of it an hour later, got dinner ready and after then he would proceed on giving his brother a very thorough massage before changing his clothes into nightwear and putting him to bed, not that Jon ever appreciates the effort, Theon thinks.

 _Then_ , he finally would have something to eat, same as today, and now he’s getting tea, and he’s done the exact same thing all the previous days.

Theon can believe that when he was summoned he couldn’t help noticing that the kid had _some_ bags under his eyes, after all.

“I’m doing what I have to,” Robb sighs. “And anyway, you’re getting the easy version of my _routine._ ”

“The easy version?”

Robb snorts. “How do you think I summoned you? Up until I did, the moment I was done with Jon, I grabbed my books and studied necromancy until midnight or so.”

Theon whistles. “Well, I’m very surprised that you’re functioning. How much of that is spite and how much is thirst for revenge?”

“I think half and half is accurate,” Robb admits. He sounds _tired_.

Theon decides that this is not the evening he puts a move on him, even if he’s sure Robb would be entirely fine with it — he has noticed the way he looks at him, and he’s not a _succubus_ for nothing.

Still, he likes his partners well-rested.

“That said, out of pure curiosity and because I haven’t been on the upside for a damned long while, is _all_ of that necessary? I’m sure you could get a moment for yourself here and there.”

Robb laughs. “Yeah, no. And I know you’re wondering about the massages. Everyone does.” He shakes his head. “If you spend that much time lying down on a bed without moving, you get bedsores. And believe me, from what I’ve seen when he was at the hospital, I _don’t_ want that on top of everything else.”

Fair point. Theon _really_ needs to take a moment to revise his human anatomy knowledge, because he had totally forgotten about _that_. Then again, he doesn’t even have _legs_ in his true form, you’ll excuse him for missing such details.

“Sounds right enough,” Theon agrees. “Well, you look about to crash on your feet and tomorrow we have to plan your revenge, go to bed. I’ll be here in the morning.”

“Do I wanna know what you’re doing out at night?” Robb asks.

“Not really. Then again, I have to get by and you want me in my best shape for whatever we have to do, don’t you?”

“Fair.” Robb finishes the tea. “I’ll just — check on him again and then I will.”

Theon follows Robb to the room he has to share with Jon because the apartment really isn’t that large, just a bathroom, a bedroom, a living room and the kitchen. The bedroom at least isn’t _too_ small, so there’s space for a medium-sized bed for Robb and a smaller one for Jon in the corner which was pushed there, according to Robb, so at least _one_ side would have a wall next to it. He stands on the door, feeling like he’s intruding as he looks at Robb sitting on the edge of the mattress and run a hand through Jon’s hair, in such a sad gesture it almost makes _him_ sad, too, and he’s a damned _demon_ , demons don’t get _sad_.

He’s about to leave, honestly, he shouldn’t even be looking at this —

Except that he sees Robb openly flinching as he does his thing, and — listen, he’s a curious by nature, and he’s a _demon_ , and human manners aren’t his thing.

“Is there a reason why you were grimacing _now_?” Theon asks.

Robb shrugs. “It’s just — he survived because there were plants under the window. They cushioned the fall, so he just hit his head _very_ badly, but he didn’t break anything and only cracked a few ribs. Anyway, there’s — a swell under here. It did go down a bit, but it never _went away_ , and the doctors said that it should, but it never happened.”

“A swell, like, a wound?”

“Not technically, but I suppose. Why?”

Theon considers whether he should do it or not.

Then again, Robb _did_ summon him and he’s been stuck in Hell for a century or so and his prospect is some _thirty_ evil souls to savor to his own pleasure. Why the hell not paying him a favor, if it’d be even _that_?

“Listen,” he says, moving closer, “I can’t bring people back to life or that shtick. You know that, it’s not our jurisdiction. But, I can heal wounds.”

“What?”

“I’m saying that if it’s about _flesh_ wounds, I can do something about it. If you want me to get that swelling down I _can_ do that. I’m not guaranteeing you that it’d make things better or that it’d change the situation or whatever else.”

“You - you’d do it?” Robb asks, sounding awed, and Theon suddenly remembers that he’s _seventeen_ and that Jon over there is _younger_.

Theon shrugs and tries to _not_ make it seem as if he actually cares either way.

“Hey, _you_ summoned me. If you want me to, I can. Again, I’m not guaranteeing you anything and if it goes badly you aren’t holding me responsible. I swore I wouldn’t hurt him _intentionally_.”

Robb nods and seems to think about it. Then he looks down and Theon does too — Jon _does_ have a pair of fairly pretty grey eyes, though they don’t hold a candle to Robb’s blue ones. Robb’s are the kind of shade you never see where he comes from — Hell’s palette is not exactly skewed towards cold colors, and Robb’s are the exact color of a clear sky when the sun is setting, and you will excuse Theon for being into _that._ As far as Jon’s are concerned, that shade reminds him a bit too much of the worst offices downstairs which tend to be all gray and populated by souls with the same shade of clothing who will keep you there for hours before letting you fill in the form that allows you upstairs in case you’re summoned. But they’re pretty enough, nothing to say, not counting _that._ Except that they’re also completely unfocused and staring at nothing.

“Do it,” Robb says, suddenly. “It can’t certainly make things _worse_ than this unless he dies, and if he dies I’m bringing him back somehow, so — what the hell. Go ahead.”

Theon _does_ feel a trifle scared at the sureness with which Robb said _I’m bringing him back_ , but then again, he did like that he showed some spirit.

He shrugs and sits next to Robb.

“Where did you say it is? Where you have your hand?”

“Yes,” Robb confirms.

Theon looks down at his hand, smirking as it slowly changes color, turning into a black and gold tentacle, and glancing at Robb — he’s staring down at it as if he’s _fascinated_ , and Theon is honestly delighted that he seems to like his true form, not many humans do. But never mind that. He has a job to do. He moves his arm forward, until the tip of the tentacle touches what feels like a _damn bad swell_.

“Shit,” he says, “he _did_ crack his head hard, didn’t he.”

“He might’ve,” Robb says, his fingers brushing against Theon’s skin. He hasn’t quite moved his hand away.

Fair enough.

Theon closes his eyes and concentrates — really, this is a job for _children_ , it only takes a tiny amount of power for such a stupid thing —, and as his tentacle covers the swell entirely, he channels the _right_ energy through it and feels it recede, slowly but surely, and a few minutes later there’s no trace of it left. He moves away his wrist, the tentacle turning back into a hand, and he glances at Jon’s face. Maybe there’s a bit of sweat over his forehead, but his eyes are closed now and he’s breathing properly.

“All done,” he says. “Try it.”

Robb moves his hand back in the place where the swell was.

“ _Oh_ ,” he gasps. “It’s - it’s gone. For real.”

“Told you that you haven’t summoned the first idiot who was just passing through.”

“Thank you,” Robb tells him, and he looks up at him with eyes that look _teary_ , what the hell?

“Was nothing,” Theon replies. “Go to sleep, I’ll be back at dawn.”

He should have just left, but he stays on the doorstep for a moment, enough to see Robb press a kiss to the side of Jon’s head before pulling his covers back up, tucking them and standing up.

He runs out of the building.

He _really_ needs to find himself a few wretched souls to feed on before he gets moved by a damned _human_.

——

“So, is it your aunt we’re going to check out?” Theon asks the next morning, as they walk down the street — Robb’s just _really_ glad that his neighbor should apply for sainthood and agreed to stick around the place also on Sunday even if she’s technically not working on Sundays. _But_ she has some dress she has was given a tight deadline for so she agreed, and honest, Robb would have switched places with her if the landlord let them, but since he won’t — at least he can be out knowing Jon isn’t on his own whatever happens.

“Yes,” he agrees. “Frey is a lot more complicated to do away with, since it’s him and his fucking herd of sons, and my aunt is just — well, her and her fucking husband. I figured I’d start you on the easy part of the job.”

“Sounds fair,” Theon agrees, and Robb doesn’t ask where did he get that spring in his step from.

He probably doesn’t want to know.

“So, last time you weren’t _that_ specific. What am I finding a way to make her life Hell for?”

Robb laughs. He _has_ to. “Whenever she showed up at home she _always_ said something that would make my sister feel like shit and her fairly horrible spoiled only son didn’t help, but that’s not the point. The point is that after her first husband died she married this Baelish arse who once wanted to marry my mother.”

“I suppose she refused him?”

“Good thing she did. Anyway, he’s — a sly, manipulative bastard who has turned her into the kind of person who - if you’re not her kid, of course — will leave you without food for two days if you get one word wrong saying grace before lunch and such pleasant things. After she had to take Jon and I in because she was literally the only blood relation we had in the country she was — well, to _me_ she just was stern but she didn’t dare do worst. Guess who _always_ had to say grace before lunch because he was the illegitimate son of my _father’_ s sister and should be grateful that _they_ took him in instead of sending him to some orphanage where he belonged?”

“Your brother?”

“Yes, and guess who had told me that he _didn’t_ even think God existed anymore after what happened to our family?”

Theon grimaces. “I imagined he wasn’t too great at saying grace, was he?”

“I had to smuggle him food _after_ dinner because no, he wasn’t. They gave us one room to share but it had just one bed, and not large enough for two, and we ended up taking turns on the ground and when she found out she moved him to one room without the damned bed. Or Baelish told her to and she agreed, I don’t know. And he has — he never told me, but since I started having to make sure he didn’t get bedsores I saw scars on his back and they were _bad_. I don’t even want to know who was it, out of the two of them. Of course, my spoiled, insufferable cousin didn’t help and spent his time making jokes about how _he_ was legitimate and Jon wasn’t, never mind that _he_ wasn’t like a brother to me. And they’d just get worse if he wasn’t vocally grateful they didn’t throw him out.” He used to feel angry just thinking about it.

Now he feels angry _and_ tired.

“Then you wonder why he fucking jumped out of the bloody window.”

Theon whistles. “Robb, damn it, sure as _hell_ you do have a lot of anger holed up in there.”

“Well, didn’t _you_ say I was functioning out of spite and thirst for revenge? I did tell you that you had it right.”

“Fair enough. But there’s more, isn’t it?”

Robb snorts. “Sure there is. You can feel it?”

“I’m kind of _tuned_ to negative emotions. Or _strong_ emotions. It’s my line of work.”

“Makes sense.” He breathes. “When — when I decided I would just — do what I did, just after at the hospital they said he’d live, I — I did ask her for help. I mean, I figured that she’d feel somewhat guilty and maybe do _something_. First she went on a rant about how suicide is a _sin_ so it was his problem to not do it in the first place. And second, and more important, she pretty much said that she wasn’t going to do a thing for someone who was a waste of air and space even when he was alive, even more so now that he was — well — the way he is.” He laughs again, and there’s nothing genuine in it. “The money she gives me for the rent, it’s — merely what allowance I was owed by law. And according to her I should be thankful that she even gives me that. So, yeah, I think I have a grudge. Or a thousand. Turn here.”

Theon follows him around the corner, and then into the nearby park — those three _always_ take a stroll around the place after church. They have to be around.

“I see,” Theon says. Robb stares at his dark eyes, which have gold flecks in them and look very, very inhuman right now, and doesn’t think for a moment, _am I doing something very stupid?_ “And what did you tell her when she informed you that she thought your, hm, brother, was a waste of air?”

Robb doesn’t even want to _think_ about it. He can feel his blood boiling just barely even going there.

“I told her that to me he was worth more unconscious than her entire family was worth to me living. She didn’t appreciate it. Wait, here.”

They stop, just behind a tree, as he sees the three of them walking up the path. They’re all dressed in impeccable clothing, just like three upper-class rich people going to church in the morning like all proper and upstanding people do, making one of those pictures you might see in newspapers as perfect reproductions of what a proper, upstanding family unit should be.

And he _hates_ it.

Theon observes them for a while, then tells Robb to stay put and _disappears_ just to show up just behind them a moment later. Nothing else happens bar him trailing behind them for a while, and then he’s next to Robb again.

“Well, your aunt’s a nasty piece of work,” he says.

“How -”

“I heard five minutes of that conversation. And I told you, I sense feelings. By the way, if I were you I’d find myself a lawyer.”

“Wait, _what_?”

“They just agreed on cutting you off the day you turn twenty-one if they can’t find a better excuse to do it first. And that’s not counting what your adorable cousin was saying about your _brother_ , I suppose.”

“Do I want to know?” Robb asks, already predicting the answer.

“… You probably don’t,” Theon replies after considering it for a moment.

Robb _could_ ask.

Then decides that maybe he doesn’t need to swallow some more bile today.

“You’re probably right. So, what’s your verdict?”

Theon smirks. It’s not a _nice_ smirk.

“My verdict is that you have plenty of options that we can work with and it’s _your_ decision. Oh, there’s an empty bench. Let’s sit and I’ll walk you through it.”

Robb nods and follows him to it.

“Well then. Go ahead.”

“It’s all down to _how_ you want to get revenge. Do you want them to die? Or to suffer? And specifically, _who_?”

“The one I want dead is Walder Frey along with his ilk,” Robb shakes his head. “ _He_ killed my family. If any of _them_ died, I’d be the next of kin and get involved, and the last thing I need is someone trying to make me pay for the funeral without them having left me any money, because of course they wouldn’t. No. I want them to suffer. At least half as much as _I_ did.”

“So what, one in between the husband and the kid dies and the other is _somehow_ incapacitated?” Theon grins, and for a moment Robb thinks _now that would be retribution_ , but then —

Then he feels a pang in his stomach that’s most probably his conscience, which he had hoped he had buried somewhere around the time he found out that if you pray until your hands shake so much that you feel like they might fall off no one will reply. But he also remembers how devastated he had felt the moment he had to look at Bran and Rickon’s little, _dead_ corpses before burying them and he doesn’t know if he wants to inflict _that_ on anyone, never mind that Robin is a little arse with no manners, but it’s his parents’s fault, not _his_.

“As much as it pains me to say, leave the kid alone.”

“Oh, is there a _conscience_ I feel?” Theon laughs.

“Shut up. Maybe. But it’s not _his_ fault if his mother is what she is and if she married someone even _worse_. No. Any beef I have with him is nothing I can’t solve without you. As far as Baelish is concerned, though, think your fucking worst because it was _his_ fault that — well, she wasn’t the best person before, but she turned into _that_ after marrying him and honest, I think he did that to get at my mother more than because he actually cared about her. I’m also somewhat sure that my aunt’s first husband died because those two poisoned him or _something_ , but never mind that. I can’t prove that.”

“Nice,” Theon says, “so, let’s _think my worst_. Well, you want her to suffer _as you did_ , right? And you also want _him_ to suffer, maybe — maybe _as your brother does_?”

“I don’t know if my brother even _suffers_ , and honestly, it’s better that way.”

“That’s because _he hit his head_ ,” Theon grins. “Not everyone who ends up bedridden for good has hit his head, my friend.”

“… Explain.”

“Well, Baelish over there is well in his forties. It’s not unheard of that men his age _might_ get a stroke. And there are _kinds and kinds_ of strokes. Some of them make you bedridden. Some others fuck with your head. After some others, people have to re-learn to do the most basic things. And if any such thing happened to him, if his loving wife doesn’t want to do what _you_ have done, she might have to pay someone handsomely enough to do it in her stead. So, he gets what your brother did, except that _he’d be there for every moment of it_. And she has to deal with it. What do you say?”

It’s probably _not_ a good thing that the moment Theon described the plan, Robb had felt raw joy spreading all over his chest, and he knows he shouldn’t be happy of other people’s suffering and that his parents are probably disapproving of all of his choices if they’re still somewhere out there, but he can only think of all the times in the last six months he looked into Jon’s eyes and saw _nothing_ and of Baelish’s small, _gloating_ grin when the doctor told them the verdict and advised Robb to just let him die to cut his sufferings short. Never mind his aunt’s whispered, _at least now we don’t have to live with_ that _in our house_ , and —

He thinks of how they slept the first night they were at his aunt’s house, in the same bed made for one trying to not fall off it and how he slipped most nights into Jon’s crappy bed-less room after they were separated to bring over an extra pillow or blanket and how he’d tell him that they just had to hang on until he could leave and then they’d get a place together and get their life back —

“Do it,” he says. “That’s — that’s exactly what I was thinking of.”

“Just so you know, I can’t _undo_ it. Told you, my line of work is either helping _you_ or doing _questionable_ things, but I can’t take back anything I do.”

“I know. I’m sure. Honestly, if she leaves him to rot he’d have deserved it. Never mind that — when they came to visit, in the last few months before Frey did what he did, he looked at my sister _wrong_.”

“How, wrong?”

“I didn’t like it. And he’d find excuses to touch her hair and — similar things. My aunt didn’t notice, of course she didn’t, but I did, and my mother did, and that’s why we had decided to stop having them over. Anyway, Sansa’s dead, so she can’t say either way, but — I’m _fairly_ sure. And — really. Do it.”

“Well then. I need to touch him to do it. And I will need a distraction. They’re still around — go meet them and get them to talk to you for a moment, I’ll come from behind and pretend I stumbled.”

“Fair. Let’s go.”

They find the three of them still taking a stroll on the other side of the park, Lysa’s hand steadily on her son’s shoulder. Robb notices him looking longingly at a few other kids playing on the side, but of course she wouldn’t let him — no, it’s not _his_ fault if he’s a spoiled little brat.

Well, hopefully he’ll benefit from what’s about to happen.

He breathes in and walks forward until he’s right in front of them.

“Aunt,” he hisses the moment he’s in her way.

“But look at who’s here,” she says, with a sweetness to her tone that’s so _fake_ Robb wants to throw up.

“Why, I can’t take a stroll on a fine Sunday morning if I want to?”

“Of course,” she replies, still smiling, and Robb can only think, _you won’t do that for much longer_. “I imagine you need a break, _don’t you_?”

 _Fuck you_ , Robb doesn’t say. “Believe me,” he hisses back, “even in his current _situation_ , my _brother_ ’s much better company than anyone else _related to me_ I can think of.”

“How rude of you,” she says, but she doesn’t seem _too_ riled up. “Honest, Robb, how long has it been? Half a year? Your dedication is heartwarming, but you would be better off —”

“Well, I certainly don’t have _myself_ to blame for the reasons why it happened. I think I’m going to enjoy his company until he dies, if that’s how it has to be.”

“Lysa, I am quite afraid we’re wasting time —” Baelish starts, and a moment later Theon crashes into him from behind, and Robb, who is _looking for it_ , can see how his hand grabs at the man’s shoulder _hard_.

“My apologies,” Theon mutters a moment later, “I hadn’t seen that tree’s root right over there. How foolish of me, right?”

“No harm done,” Baelish replies, in distaste, and Theon excuses himself for having disrupted their conversation and runs on the other side of the path.

Well then.

“Maybe we all are wasting time,” Robb says. “Well, have a good morning. Don’t bother to pray for me next time, I know you didn’t this one and I can do without.”

“Robb!” His aunt exclaims. “Don’t blaspheme —”

“As if you ever did. I _beg your pardon_ ,” he says, nodding, and then turns his back on them and heads for the gate. Theon’s leaning against it, waiting for him.

“Well, good thing you didn’t tell them that _you never know what might happen to you_ , otherwise they could have gotten suspicious later.”

“I’m not that much of a fucking idiot. So?”

“I didn’t do it _now_ because it would have looked suspicious if it happened while _you_ were there. But they shall have a bad surprise at dinner.”

“Good. Then I think our work here is done, for the moment.”

“It might be,” Theon says, “but I think you can stand stopping somewhere for tea.”

“I don’t have time —”

“When it’s the last time you’ve done it?”

Robb thinks about it. He — he can’t remember.

“I think before my parents died?” He admits.

“Robb, come on. Your neighbor’s at your place, you’ve been gone maybe two hours and it’s another couple until lunch, I guess. Live a little.”

He would like to say no.

But Theon has a point, demon or not.

“Fine,” he agrees, “let’s have tea.”

They find a place that doesn’t look abysmal, and he takes a good half hour to enjoy it while Theon drinks his with the face of someone who doesn’t get the point of it.

“You don’t have tea in Hell?” Robb asks.

“Not really,” Theon replies. “It just tastes fucking weird. Like _all_ your food. But it could be worse.”

They finish it, and when they head back home Robb’s somehow feeling better, and less tired, but he doesn’t know if it’s because he knows that one day from now his aunt will feel everything _he_ had to feel or if it’s because he went _out_ for three hours and actually enjoyed half of his time out.

What he knows is that when he goes back home, Ygritte is sitting in front of the window in his living room, with the door open so she can look inside the bedroom.

“Did anything happen?” He asks her.

“No,” she says, stitching together what seems like a pocket on the coat she’s working at. “Sorry to say. Well, at least nothing’s changed for the worst. You think I can stay here until the sun’s down? I should deliver this in two days and I need all the light I can get.”

“Sure. You can have lunch with me and, uh, my lawyer.”

Theon’s eyes go slightly wide at that — then again, they _didn’t_ decide on a cover, but he walked in with Robb and she hasn’t seen him until _now_ , so he did have come up with something.

“What,” she says, her smiling revealing a couple crooked teeth, but given that she has _all_ of them, she can count herself lucky, “you finally getting around to get your family some justice?”

“Maybe I am,” he says. “At least, I could try. Uh —”

“Theon _Greyjoy_ ,” Theon says, moving forward and kissing her hand _very_ gallantly. “Enchanted.”

“Flatterer,” she grins. “That’s Ygritte to you, I grew up in an orphanage and I don’t care for my last name. Well, I hope you’re good enough to prove whatever it is they did to his relatives. And I’ll have lunch with you, just let me finish here.”

“I can cook,” Robb says, “don’t bother. It’s enough that you’d stay here.”

“Hey, your brother’s better company than about most men I run into,” she winks, and then she goes back to stitching her jacket.

Theon follows him inside the kitchen and Robb really would like to know why he’s smiling _knowingly_ at him. Except that Robb definitely doesn’t know what Theon thinks he knows.

“What?” He asks.

“I was just wondering if you and _Ygritte_ were having a moment,” Theon winks.

Robb _would_ have thrown a pot at him, if he hadn’t known that a _demon_ wouldn’t be hurt.

“She’s my _friend_ and _no_ , we were having no _moments_ , and my type’s really not someone who looks like she could be my sister.”

“Fair enough,” Theon agrees. “So, I’m your _lawyer_ now?”

“It was the first thing I thought of, shut up.”

“Hey, us demons make excellent lawyers.”

“And what was the _Greyjoy_ about?”

“Just translating part of my name, never mind that.”

Robb figures that it makes sense, and proceeds on cooking.

Better that he worries about _that_.

——

At six in the afternoon, the sun is setting and Robb is trying to get ahead with some of the accounting work he has for tomorrow so he can maybe stay less.

That is, until he hears a groan coming from Jon’s bed.

Wait.

 _Wait_.

Jon hasn’t made a sound in the last six months, for better or worse, and unless he’s imagined it -

It happens again.

Robb shuts the accounting book closed and runs toward the side of the bed. Jon’s arm is dangling out of the covers, and —

And he can see his fingers moving. In small jerks, but they’re _moving_.

Before he can give in to the instinct of throwing up his lunch he reaches down and takes his hand in between both of his.

Jon groans a third time, moving his head to the side slightly.

 _Might it be that —_ Robb doesn’t dare finish that thought because it would be too much, and he doesn’t want to set himself up to fail because he couldn’t stand it, not when he’s been hoping for it for this long, but maybe -

Maybe it really was about that swell Theon cured yesterday?

He moves one hand to the side of Jon’s face, turning it towards him, and — for the first time in six months, he’s actually pressing back against his palm, not just letting him do it.

Robb has to purposefully put effort into not making his hand shake.

“Jon?” He asks, almost dreading it. He’s _talked_ his ear off to Jon since they ended up in this blasted situation, not that he ever got an answer, but maybe this time —

He’s _really_ glad that he had been keeping his hand still, because a moment later he feels Jon’s fingers lightly, _lightly_ grasping back at his own.

He stays still, not daring to hope that he might be waking up _for real_ , but —

He squeezes back. He doesn’t want to push this, not when from everything he’s been told _if_ people wake up from _this_ it’s not at once, but —

“Jon, can you look at me?” He breathes, trying to keep his voice even, and —

He sees Jon’s eyelashes move slightly, as if he’s trying to open his eyes but can’t get quite there yet, and he holds his breath until —

 _Until he actually does_ , and then Jon’s _looking_ at him for the first time in six months and Robb wants to break down in tears but no, he _won’t_ , the last thing he needs is scare the shit out of his brother the moment he’s woken up, damn —

“Robb…?” He whispers, his voice rough from disuse, and Robb doesn’t even try to _not_ cry at that.

“Yes,” he manages to say.

“What —” Jon croaks again, but then shakes his head slightly.

Robb doesn’t know _what_ , but — he doesn’t care. “Hey, it’s — it’s fine. Everything is.” _No, it isn’t_ , but for now he feels like he could weep in relief for the next ten years. “Get — get some rest. It’s fine.”

Jon nods minutely and goes back to sleep a moment later, but — it’s not the same as before. _Something_ is different, most of all that Jon’s actually reacting to what he does.

Robb has no idea of what the hell just happened, if Theon had anything to do with it or _whatever_ , but Theon won’t be home before sunrise, also because he said he would keep an eye on Baelish and he’d come back with news on that, and —

He kicks off his shoes and climbs into the bed - it’s small and it barely fits the two of them and his own would have been better, but the moment Jon’s hand squeezes his again he decides he can’t give a damn.

——

The next morning, he slips out of bed and starts making himself a _lot_ of tea — he’s going to have to ask the shop owner for a few free days, but he can work from here anyway and he’ll understand, he thinks — when Theon slips inside the kitchen.

“Well, you’ll be glad to know — woah. What’s happened?”

“Why are you asking?” Robb replies, unable to stop himself from sounding _utterly_ giddy.

“Because you’re fucking glowing. Don’t tell me it was just anticipation.”

“No. No, it’s — Jon, he — he woke up, before. For maybe a minute, but — he actually _looked_ at me. And he was reacting instead of just - you know. And I have a feeling I have to thank you for that.”

“Well, I just healed the injury, I didn’t do anything else, but good for him.” And — he sounds like he _means_ it. “Anyhow, I also have other news for you.”

“Such as?” Robb asks, his heart beating slightly louder in his ribcage.

“ _Well_ , our friend Mr. Baelish suddenly suffered from a _very_ debilitating stroke during his dinner. He might have been brought to the nearest hospital with a load of pumpkin soup spilled all over his fancy shirt.”

Robb thinks of _all_ the laundry he has had to wash in the first month when he still hadn’t figured out the best way to get Jon to ingest _anything_ without half of it spilling. “Too bad for him. He’s not dead, I suppose.”

“Of course he’s not. I lingered around waiting to hear the verdict.”

“Which would be?”

“For now, complete paralysis of the right half of his body. Possibly he can regain mobility up to a point, but it’s going to take _years_. Of course, he won’t be able to write until he regains _some_ , and he’s facing being bedridden for at least six months, and it’ll take a while before he can speak again. And he’s never going to gain back _all_ of it, if he doesn’t get another stroke, of course. Too bad, right?”

Robb should probably feel bad for openly grinning as he hears it, but honestly, it feels like such a sweet revenge, he can’t bloody bring himself to care.

“And how did my aunt take it?”

“Badly,” Theon grins, “but that’s a bit of an understatement. So, has your _lawyer_ worked well for now?”

“I think he’s earned any reward he might ask for now,” Robb grins back, and he hasn’t felt this exhilarated in _years_ , probably.

“Really. Because I have quite a few things in mind.”

“I think,” Robb replies, “that I have an idea or two of what you might be thinking, and I’m _absolutely_ all right with all of them.”

“Well, I don’t think _most_ would be a good idea now since you look like you’re about to fall asleep on your feet, _but_ ,” Theon says, leaning closer, “I think I might give you a taste.”

“ _You_ might give me a taste?” Robb asks, and then he puts a hand behind is neck and drags him in, crashing their mouths together, and _fuck_ but Theon kisses back at once, his tongue meeting Robb’s, and _hell_ but it’s different than kissing a human. Robb’s kissed a few girls in his life and he was in a thing with Jeyne Westerling in boarding school that no one knew about least of all their teachers (which of course was over the moment he heard the news), but this is not the same. Theon’s tongue is slightly rougher than any girl’s he’s ever tasted and his mouth is warm and wet and slots perfectly against his, and it’s _so much better_ , he groans into the kiss and grabs at Theon’s hair, dragging him closer, and when they finally move apart because he needs to breathe, Theon looks _delighted_.

“Robb Stark,” he says, “you’re _everything_ you promise, you know that?”

“Good to hear,” Robb says. “And — right, maybe I’m tired now, and I’ll be for a few days, but when this situation’s settled, I definitely want _more_ of that.”

“Good,” Theon agrees, “because that wasn’t even a tenth of what I wanted to do. But go have that tea before you faint. I’ve waited years to leave Hell, I can wait three days until you can give me your full attention.”

Robb pours the tea and winks at him from behind his mug. “Oh, it’s going to be entirely worth it. I don’t like to disappoint,” he grins, and he _knows_ he won’t.

Especially since _he_ has ideas about what he’d like to do with Theon, too.

——

His **boss** , thankfully, understands the situation and lets him work from home that week. The first couple of days Jon spends most of the time sleeping anyway, but he’ll answer if you call and by day three, he actually walks around without Robb needing to hold him up. He has to get explained how to eat all over again, but at the end of day four he has that down, too, not counting that sometimes his fingers shake out of the blue, but it’s barely relevant to Robb at this point. Given that he had been warned that if more than a month went by without any changes, _if_ Jon ever woke up again it would take _months_ to get there, he’s feeling like they’re living in some kind of miracle.

Except that _miracle_ is most likely _not_ the right word.

When, by day six, Jon’s actually _talking_ to him more or less normally and he has confirmed Robb that he remembers more or less everything from _before_ the accident and actually fucking apologized for it, as if Robb wanted apologies, he _knows_ this isn’t normal.

“Are you _sure_ that your magical healing has nothing to do with _that_?” He asks Theon that evening.

“With _what_? I’ve been out the entire day and you still haven’t _properly introduced_ us, I have no clue.”

Robb rolls his eyes — Theon’s _smirking_ as he speaks, so he obviously knows. “Oh, that when the doctors told me everything I was facing they said that even if he woke up and it took longer than a two months or three, he likely wouldn’t walk before _months_ and he might forget me altogether, or that it might take him as long to talk properly and such. Instead he’s walking fine, he remembers pretty much everything and he’s speaking pretty much normally. So, are you sure you don’t have anything to do with _that_?”

Theon shrugs. “Honestly? I have no idea. _Maybe_. Again, I healed _the wound_. If some magic slipped through farther than that, well, it could be a thing. Or not. But if it’s not normal, then I probably do have something to do with that. But if you’re worrying whether there’s a catch or not, well, there shouldn’t be.”

“There _shouldn’t_ be?”

He shrugs again. “Magic is _not_ a science, Robb Stark, though you can study it like one, I suppose. There’s nothing _inherently_ negative in what I choose to do, it’s just that since I’m a _demon_ there’s ways in which I’m bound to use my powers. I gave him a nudge. Obviously, he wasn’t going to come back to the living if that wound didn’t disappear. Maybe I spared him some suffering, but I only healed the physical part of it. That’s the extent of it. Don’t worry, he’s not turning into one of us and he’s not going to have a relapse. Anything _else_ , though, it’s out of my hands.”

“Fair enough,” Robb admits. It sounds legitimate, and he’s sure Theon isn’t lying — he would have no reason to, and he _did_ swear, didn’t he?

 _Are you trusting a demon now_?, a small part of him tries to ask.

_Well, he’s the only one who ever answered, so maybe yes, maybe I fucking do._

There’s no answer.

Of course there’s _not_.

——

He times everything properly — he introduces Jon and Theon on Sunday evening at dinner, given that Jon still sleeps half of the day off and until now they had no chances, and Ygritte is supposed to drop by during the evening so he can meet her, too. Given how she’s been a lifesaver those six months, Robb is still going to let her use the living room, and if Jon has _some_ company it won’t be a bad thing. It goes well enough — Jon _does_ look a bit perplexed when Robb goes with the lawyer story, but he nods before asking Robb _and where did you get the money to pay for one_. He slurs a bit, but nothing that won’t disappear soon, given that three days ago it was a _lot_ more evident.

“I saved money these few months,” Robb lies.

“I’m not that expensive,” Theon lies along, and Robb can’t help noticing that for being a _demon_ he’s a perfectly good actor.

Never mind that when he says it his left eye glints gold for a moment and Robb feels heat pooling up in his crotch — gods, maybe _tonight_ they could —

Someone knocks.

“That must be the neighbor,” Robb says. “I’ll get it.”

“The neighbor?” Jon asks.

“She’s a seamstress, I let her work here because the light’s better. And she’s paid me a few favors in exchange.”

Jon shrugs minutely and nods, and Robb goes to open the door.

To find himself in front of his aunt, who looks like she’s _not_ happy at all.

Of course she’s not.

Actually, she looks _angry_ , and she has the eyes of someone who hasn’t slept for a good week — well, Robb has barely slept for _months_ , good luck to her —, her dress and cloak aren’t pristinely pressed as usual and her hair is not _perfectly_ kept.

Given that the _one_ time he barely even mentioned her to Jon in the previous week he had sorely regretted because it had triggered a crying fit that didn’t stop for a good half hour, Robb isn’t taking any risks and he steps out of the door, closing it behind him. He has the keys on him anyway.

“What do you want?” Robb asks immediately.

“Where did your manners go?” She replies, taken back.

Robb could say a _lot_ to that.

“You lost your right to _my_ manners a long time ago. Again: what do you want?”

She _stares_ at him, then grits her teeth, then —

“I imagine you _will_ have heard about your uncle.”

“He’s _not_ my uncle, but yes, I heard.”

“And that’s all you have to say?”

Robb shrugs. “He’s half the reason _my brother_ spent six months in a coma, do you expect me to tell you I’m sorry to hear it? I’m not. He can rot for all I care.”

“… _Spent_?”

“Oh, haven’t _you_ heard?” Robb smiles. “He hasn’t been in one for a week. And he’s doing remarkably well, all things considered.”

“ _Remarkably well_.”

“The doctors can’t explain it, admittedly,” Robb shrugs, a smirk on his lips. As if any _doctor_ has been here — they’d probably want to do _extensive check-ups_ or some bullshit like that and he’s _not_ letting anyone make Jon’s life any harder. “But yes. He’s up. He’s eating. He’s also having two-sided conversations. No thanks to _you_.”

“Is that why you locked the door?” She sneers.

“Do you think that I would risk him seeing you? Forget it.”

“As if I want to see him.”

“I thought that might not be the reason why you’re here. So, _what do you want_?”

She breathes in, shaking her head, and then makes a face as if she had just swallowed a frog.

“I cannot be there all the time for Petyr.”

Robb nods, waiting for her to go on, stopping himself from asking her, _and what do you think I’ve done for the last six months_?

“I had to hire a few professionals.”

“Seems like you have the situation under control then.”

“Well, given that _you_ must have some experience in the area, I don’t see why I should pay for _a few_ when you could do your duty by your family and —”

Robb doesn’t even let her finish before he laughs in her face — gods, he had expected something ridiculous, but _this_? This takes the bloody cake.

“Excuse me,” he wheezes, “have you just implied that I should play nurse to your _husband_ for free just because he’s married to you and we’re _related_ when the only reason I know how to play nurse is that you and him treated Jon so horribly that he felt the need to _jump out of the bloody window_?”

“Robb, if your mother could see you —” She starts, and then Robb isn’t laughing anymore. The words die in her mouth the moment she meets Robb’s eyes after she starts that sentence, and no, she shouldn’t have gone _there_.

“Don’t you _ever_ mention my mother in front of me,” Robb hisses, his voice dropping low enough that he sounds like a different person.

“Robb -”

“My _mother_ ,” Robb keeps on, “asked _all_ of us if we were fine with helping out when it came to my _other_ aunt, and it was a decision that _all of us_ took, and she never made Jon feel like he was lesser than any of us, and she never spoke ill of _his parents_ in front of him as much as she didn’t have a high opinion of their life choices, and we all knew that. My _mother_ had left you a letter where she wrote that if _anything_ should happen to them — and guess what, _it did_ — she _begged_ you to take us in and treat _any_ of her children including Jon properly, and don’t look too surprised — she made me read it before I left for the semester. We were close, if you hadn’t realized. I don’t know what you made of it, nothing good, I suppose, but you obviously cared little for it. My _mother_ wouldn’t have wanted me to _beg you_ to give me some money that you owed me anyway so that I could look after him in peace. And my _mother_ didn’t like your husband, the same way _I_ didn’t, so if you think that I have any obligation towards him, you can fucking forget it. If my mother could see me she wouldn’t approve of a lot of things I had to do, but if she could see _you_ she’d be devastated, and maybe she was a better person than me because I _know_ she’d have helped you out, but tough luck, I’m _not_ her. So _no_. You have enough money to pay off your professionals. Given how much Walder Frey gave you for what should have been _my_ property, I think you can afford it for the next few years at least. And if you could leave already, since I was expecting a guest, I’d appreciate it.”

“… A _guest_.”

And then Ygritte clears her throat from behind her.

“He meant me,” she says. “Sorry to disturb your highness.”

Lysa moves back, enough to notice that Ygritte is certainly _no_ high class maiden.

“… _That_ is your guest?” She asks.

“She helped me out more than you ever have. And _no_ , she’s not my guest like _that_. Not that there’d be a problem if she was.”

“Lady,” Ygritte starts, “seems to me like you’re not welcome. And honest, it’s _rich_ of you that you want him to lose sleep over your husband when he’s just stopped losin’ it over his brother. Some of us actually work to pay our rent, so how about you feel thankful that you’ve got the money to have him looked after and you leave him alone?”

Gods, Robb _really_ is glad that he ran into her.

“This isn’t over here,” Lysa says, and storms down the stairs.

For a long moment, neither of them speaks.

“Well, she’s a fucking piece of work,” Ygritte says, sympathetically. “So, are you introducing me to your brother properly or not?”

“Oh — yes, of course. Sorry, I was expecting you when I opened the door. How long have you waited?”

“Well, I heard it all, she wasn’t keeping her voice down. But never mind that, she didn’t deserve your time in the first place.”

Fair enough — Robb opens the door and invites her in, making up some bullshit about someone who got the wrong floor, and he introduces Ygritte to Jon.

“Huh,” she says, as Jon reaches out to shake her hand — his fingers are trembling lightly, but she just shakes them back, “let me tell you, you look a lot better when you’re awake, Jon Snow.”

“I — thank you?” He blurts, looking halfway flattered and halfway like he doesn’t know what to do with her, and Robb can relate because he hadn’t either, when they met first. “I’m — good to hear it.”

“Well, it’s nice to meet you _properly_.” She winks. “And I assume Robb has maybe something to celebrate? Because I have another dress to start tomorrow for my least favorite customer and I think I’m in dire need of it.”

“Coming,” Robb smirks, pouring her some whiskey. Theon also gets some, he doesn’t get any if only because Jon _can’t_ and he’s not going to have him be the only one who’s not getting alcohol around the table.

——

She stays for a while, and while Jon makes little conversation, what little he says shows that he’s definitely following it, and by the time she’s gone back home and Jon has gone to sleep, and he’s definitely dead to the world this time — he was out the moment his face touched the pillow —, Robb _doesn’t_ feel sleepy at all.

He goes back to the living room, where Theon is sprawled on the sofa.

“So,” Theon asks, “nice evening?”

“You were there,” Robb smiles, “‘course it is. And I was thinking.”

“Do share.”

“I’m not _that_ tired. This week has been way less tiring than usual. I’m _dying_ to let off some steam here. And I think I promised you something, didn’t I?”

Theon’s smile is positively predatory.

“I think you did, and I think it’d be an excellent payment. But maybe _here_ it’s not a good idea.”

“Er, the bedroom —”

“Robb, there’s an apartment on the first floor that’s _not_ rented yet. The lock is broken. And it has a _very_ functional bed.”

“Do I want to know _how_ you found out?”

“Hey, I do pay attention to my surroundings. So, shall we?”

Robb smirks.

“ _Yes_ ,” he breathes, and minutes later he has locked the door to the house and followed Theon into the infamous apartment on the first floor. It indeed has a broken lock and a functional bed, on which Theon sits down with a motion so fluid it’s inhuman.

Then again, he is _not_ human, is he?

“So,” Theon says, “if you want to have a piece, I’m all yours.”

“Oh, I do want a piece,” Robb says, “but — like this?”

Theon’s eyebrow raises. “Well, that’s my _human_ form, genius. And you’re human.”

“… But I liked your true one,” Robb answers, a bit sheepish.

Theon _stares_ at him, his eyes suddenly flashing gold.

“Robb,” he says slowly, “are you implying that you _actively_ want to —”

“Well, if it’s _compatible_ , yes? They — they were beautiful. _You_ were beautiful,” Robb admits, before he loses the guts. “If it’s not —”

“Oh, I never said it wasn’t,” Theon smirks, “it just takes a bit of imagination. But by all means.”

He stands up, and suddenly his clothes disappear, along with his _legs_ , and a moment later the bed is creaking under a mass of black and gold tentacles, moving slowly as if stretching for a few seconds, before a couple stretch forward and lock around Robb’s wrists, dragging him forward.

He doesn’t oppose any resistance as he feels that warm, rough flesh touch his skin, and he kicks off his shoes as he’s lifted up slightly — a moment later, he’s… well, _sitting_ , for lack of better words, on the mass of tentacles starting just under Theon’s waist and fuck, _fuck_ , they’re warm and _solid_ and rough at just the right point. He runs a hand along the one looped around his waist now, his fingers pressing against it, and Theon groans a little under him - Robb looks at him again and - _and_ his eyes are mostly gold and a little black now, not the contrary, and if he shouldn’t feel turned on, well, _he doesn’t care_.

“Fuck,” he says, “fuck, they’re _gorgeous_.”

“… Well, that’s new,” Theon replies, sounding pleased out of everything.

“New?”

“Robb, most people who saw them were kind of _scared shitless_ instead of turned on the way _you_ obviously are,” he grins, the tentacle on Robb’s waist gripping _tighter_.

“I’m not most people,” Robb grins back, grasping at another thinner, floating one, and — well, fuck it, why not? He puts his mouth to it, kissing it, running his tongue over the rogue texture below, and Theon groans so hard at that, Robb smiles against his skin and licks the tip instead.

“You’re a fucking menace,” Theon breathes, “and I see you aren’t losing time.”

“I don’t _like_ to lose time. So, what else can these do?”

“Oh,” Theon says, “a _lot_ of things. You mind getting rid of those trousers?”

Robb does the moment he’s lifted up, and fuck but it’s _hot_ , all right, and Theon drags him closer — now he’s sitting right where Theon’s crotch would be, if he was human.

 _If he was human_.

He should probably be worried by how he’s turned on by how the dark black of those tentacles melts into gold just at Theon’s waist before turning into unblemished, pale skin.

Then again, by _now_ , he supposes it’s not what he should be worried about most.

His trousers and underwear fall to the ground as he grinds his cock agains those warm, dark tentacles, and then he feels one of them pressing against the crack of his arse, and oh, _oh_ , it’s —

It’s _slick_ , but it wasn’t before, and not it’s _teasing_ just along his rim, and —

“Fuck,” Robb says, “ _fuck_ , you mean that those can —”

“Darling, _they_ can be useful for a lot of things. That said, since this is your first time with a demon and all, maybe I could hear out your ideas. I suppose you have some, don’t you?”

“Oh,” Robb breathes, “I do. I _really fucking do_ ,” he goes on.

And he has.

Hell, he has fantasized over _this_ since he summoned Theon first and he can’t believe it’s actually happening, and he’s going to make most of it if it fucking kills him.

“Why, then you should share.”

“For one,” Robb says, his knees clamping down against dark, warm flesh that curls around his ankles a moment later, “I want,” he goes on, his hands going to Theon’s wrists and pinning them agains the pillow, “to ride you like _this_.”

Theon’s eyes are positively glinting gold and he’s smiling like the cat that ate the cream.

“Look at that,” he says, “you’re bossy even in bed, huh? Good. I like that. And I like your ideas. Sure you can ride me,” he goes on, and fuck, Robb’s going to last very little here if he doesn’t get a bloody grip on himself.

“Then,” he says, spreading his legs a little bit, “you’re welcome to go ahead.”

“Nice,” Theon grins, and a moment later that slick, thin tentacle is circling at his rim and pushing inside again, slowly, opening him up carefully, and it’s so _warm_ and it’s slightly rough under whatever oil it’s oozing that would help the way in, and Robb groans in relief the moment Theon finally goes for it and thrusts inside him.

 _Good_.

“Enjoying that?” Theon laughs.

“Oh, _a lot_ ,” Robb says, raising his hips upwards and slamming them _down_ and at that, Theon moans so loudly that he’s really glad this floor is empty or someone would have definitely come in, and a moment later Robb realizes that he’s going along with his motions rather than outright fucking him and _shit_ but it’s making his head spin just at the thought and so he rides him faster, his cock becoming harder and harder with each time he slams his hips downwards, and then he wonders, _maybe_ —

“Hey,” he says, “I think — you mind giving me a hand down there?”

“My hands are — _oh_ ,” Theon groans. “‘Course you mean _that_. Sure. No problem,” he grins again, and another tentacle wraps around Robb’s cock a moment later, slick and warm and rough and _perfect_ , fisting it _way_ better than anyone’s ever done with their hands, and _fuck_ but Theon’s jerking him off going at the same rhythm as his thrusts and then Theon opens his eyes and looks up at him and they’re almost all gold and _fuck_ , Robb has to lean down and kiss him, slamming their mouths together and feeling Theon’s human tongue touch his own while his very non-human tentacles bring him off.

He leans back, his teeth grasping at Theon’s lower lip before he slams his hips down again, _hard_ , and the tentacle gripping his cock momentarily loses its hold because Theon’s mouth has parted and his eyes are _all_ gold and the tentacle he had inside Robb has turned larger and _harder_ before suddenly he feels something wet run down his legs and — shit, _oh_ , shit, he thinks Theon just came inside him _however that works_ and he can’t really last that much longer and he comes all over the tentacle grasping loosely at his cock, staining with white that black flesh and at that point he slams his mouth against Theon’s again, and _again_ , until they’re both panting and he feels empty and _cold_ , but it doesn’t last too much because then a _hell of a lot_ of tentacles are wrapping around his legs and Theon’s moving upwards and they’re staring at each other from an even level. Theon’s face is covered in sweat and his eyes are dark again, but he doesn’t look like he’s _done_.

Good, because neither is he.

“Robb Stark,” he breathes, “that was a _spectacular_ lay, for you being a human.”

“Well, I live to impress,” Robb says, his hands going to Theon’s cheeks, running his thumb along them. “And I think I’m up for another round, if you’re amenable.”

“I was about to tell you,” Theon says, “I can actually turn human _enough_ for you to fuck me properly while the rest of my legs are _not_. You think you’re up for it?”

Robb’s hand goes to the back of his neck, grasping at it. “I think,” he says, “that if you give me ten minutes I’m _more_ than ready to go for it.”

“Does that mean we can be here all night?”

Robb grins. “I think we earned it.”

“Fuck,” Theon says, “so I get you all for myself for now _and_ you also are promising me those thirty sweet souls to feast on? I think I’m _really_ glad you summoned me, Stark.”

“Believe me,” Robb says, “I’m _absolutely_ glad of it, too,” and then he slams his mouth against Theon’s while those tentacles hold him closer and he decides that yes, summoning Theon is the best damned decision he ever took, and if it means his soul is damned, fuck that. He has a feeling it’s not going to be that much of a bad bargain, after all.

——

The next morning, Robb can’t stop grinning as he makes tea — Jon is still sleeping in the next room, _thankfully_ because by the time they had dragged themselves upstairs Robb had needed to take a very, _very_ long bad given all the golden slime attached to his legs. Theon is sitting on the other side of the table, grinning equally, and of course _he_ didn’t need to wash or anything.

“So,” he says, his teeth glinting white in the dawn’s light, “should we discuss about those _delicious_ thirty souls you promised me if I accepted this job?”

Robb smiles back as he sits down, cup of tea in hand. “Oh, _absolutely_. What do you need to know in order to come up with one of those plans of yours?”

“I need details,” Theon says. “Who are they, _exactly_ how many, how did he kill your family, where does he live and so on. And then I need to know if you’d rather have it happening quietly or not.”

“I — hadn’t thought as far,” Robb admits. “Anyhow — well, as I told you, Frey used to be our neighbor when we still lived in the country, but after my aunt sold the property to him and he sold the entire area to that factory, he has packed his bags and moved here with the rest of the family. As in, they own this huge mansion in Surrey, I think. Him, his last wife and his… sixty descendants or so.”

“ _Sixty_?”

“Yeah, well, the old arse is pushing ninety and the current with is… the ninth? Tenth? I don’t even know, but he’s had children with all of them, and all of them had children themselves, so he’s got a small village’s worth of fucking Freys in there.”

Theon whistles. “Well, that’s one way to get around. So, I imagine you don’t want the last of their offspring dead, knowing you.”

“No,” Robb says at once. “I am not killing _children_ over it. But I want _anyone_ who had a hand in my family’s death gone. And I want Walder Frey to see it before he dies for last.”

“Tasty. Very well, then I suppose that I should inquire in _who_ exactly had a hand in it. Do you already know some?”

“Oh, his oldest male sons were all involved. I’d have known. I’ve seen their faces at the funeral. Possibly some of the second generation might have been, too. As far as the women are concerned, _some_ had to because the food was poisoned and I wouldn’t assume that they let the maids handle it or that the male Freys know how to cook, but not all of them and certainly not _their_ children. Some of their husbands, though, also could have been.”

“I see,” Theon nods. “Then if you aren’t the jealous kind, I think I know a fairly foolproof way of finding _that_ out. I can just seduce a few of them and start collecting on my due payment if you point me towards a couple that you’re sure had a hand in it, and before I get to eat their souls I will have them spilling the details.”

Robb laughs. “Didn’t you say that one thing is _getting laid_ and another is _eating souls_? If you aren’t getting _them_ laid, I’m not jealous.”

“Good enough. That said, after we find out, what’s your plan?”

“Well, as long as _he_ is the last and gets a taste of seeing his spawn die in front of him, I’m open to suggestions.”

“Then,” Theon says, “I think you should bring me where these people live and leave it to me for a day or so and then I can come back with information _and_ a few of my plans you like so much, how about _that_?”

“Sure,” Robb says. “I have the morning off and Ygritte was supposed to come here regardless, but — I guess I’ll make sure Jon’s up and everything and then we can go, that good with you?”

“ _You_ are the one in a hurry, Stark. Sure, it’s all fine by me,” he grins, and Robb —

Robb keeps on thinking, _summoning him was the best decision I ever took, and if my soul burns in Hell for that, good riddance_.

He finishes his tea, he leaves breakfast ready for Jon, he wakes him up and tells him he has to go run some errands but he’ll be back in the afternoon and Ygritte will drop by to keep him company. Jon gives him a nod, and he’s obviously not awake enough for proper replying, but then he shakes his head and tells him that it’s fine, he can leave, and Robb takes another moment to think that it’s really, really going _entirely too well_.

He has a feeling there’s going to be a catch somewhere, but if there is, _well_ , he’ll handle it when it’s time to.

Now, he has to get Theon to Frey’s mansion and get started on that, because if his aunt was only the first problem, _they_ are the main one and he’s not going to rest until he sees them dead, all of them.

 

 

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI GUYS SO IT'S HALLOWEEN IN MY TIME ZONE SO HERE YOU GO HAVE THE REST OF THIS THING IDEK WHAT IT IS ANYMORE. It was supposed to be two parts but then a) it got too long, b) the split was too obvious so this chapter is more the pseudo Jon/Ygritte subplot than those other two morally questionable assholes, the next chapter is back into WOW THIS IS NOT MY USUAL SANDBOX I NEVER WRITE THIS KINDA THING BUT APPARENTLY I DID. Have fun, or not.
> 
> Also, fair warning: ALL the tags above related to mental breakdowns, triggering and emotional/physical abuse are in this chapter, it's all Jon-related and specifically [SPOILERS] in the scene where Lysa shows up [/SPOILER], I warned you. /o\ Like I hope I tagged everything properly in case tell me if I can add more but everything should have been covered. /o\

Thing is: Jon is _somehow_ sure something doesn’t add with the whole _lawyer_ deal, and he’s also fairly sure that lawyers don’t hang around people’s houses half of the time, _but_ he’s not going to bring it up with Robb now or at any point soon for a number of reasons, first of which would be that he doesn’t sure he could handle that conversation.

If anything because since he woke up and since he got a sense of his bearings and put himself together, if you could call it like _that_ , he’s realized that the moment he tries to think about having a potentially long conversation with _anyone_ that implies discussing what happened _before_ he spent six months in a coma (he knows it was six months, he’s _seen_ the calendar) he feels like his head is going to split in two just at the prospect. And honestly, given _what_ he has managed to survive against all odds (and against his own hopes when he jumped), he’s entirely aware that it’s a downright miracle if he can stay upright, _walk_ , eat and follow a damned conversation, never mind _having_ one.

Also, Robb looks so ecstatic these days that Jon wouldn’t really tell him anything that might get his mood down. It’d be the least, since he supposes he didn’t appreciate that he tried —

Right.

He’s _not_ going to think about why he jumped from that window nor how about it seemed a perfectly valid solutions to his problems back in the day.

So, whoever the lawyer is, Jon is just going to take it at face value, and if Robb wants justice for their family, who is he to stop him? Sure, it literally fucking _hurts_ just thinking about them, but — it’s been not even two weeks. It’s going to get better, he thinks. He _has_ gotten better until now, hasn’t he?

Anyway, he’s just finished his tea and he’s put the mug in the kitchen’s sink when someone knocks loudly on the door, and for a moment he thinks that it’s odd Robb would be back so soon, but —

No. No, he did say something about _someone_ having to show up —

He opens the door, and — oh. Right, there _she_ is. The redheaded neighbor who came to dinner a few days ago, God, what was her name, what was her _name_ , he can’t bloody recall —

“Nice to see you up and about,” she grins, holding a bunch of fabric in the crook of her arm. “So, Robb said our deal that I keep you company while I sew is still valid. May I —”

“Oh. Yeah, sure,” he blurts, letting her pass, and then — well. He can’t just wait until it comes to him. He has a feeling it won’t. “Uh, listen, I — this is going to sound rude, I guess, but I remember most of that dinner but I think — what was your name again? Sorry, it’s just —”

“Hey, you were in a _coma_ until two weeks ago, no one is getting offended if you forget a few things. Ygritte, by the way.”

Oh. _Ygritte_. He’s going to remember it, damn it. “ _Right_. Thanks, it’s just that it wouldn’t come to me and —”

“Don’t get worried about _that_ , it’s fine. So, fancy seeing me swear while I try to stitch this monster of a gown together?”

“That sounds better than doing nothing,” he says, feeling like it’s a woefully inadequate answer.

“Fair enough,” she grins, and he can’t help thinking she has a pretty smile.

It reminds him of _someone_ , but the moment he goes there he feels the back of his head starting to pound, and he goes to get the both of them a glass of water instead.

_That_ should work, he decides. And then at worst he can see if he can help her out without being too much of a nuisance.

Yeah. That sounds like a proper plan, and if the headache recedes, all the better for it.

——

Theon is gone for all of the evening and the afternoon, and by the time Robb turns in for the night, he knows he’s not going to be back until dawn. Then again, he’s working for _him_ , so he shouldn’t be here missing his damned presence, but _fuck_ if he hadn’t hoped they might share that bed downstairs again. Once was nowhere near enough. _Absolutely_ nowhere near enough. But he supposes that figuring out the Freys is more important than his damned urges, and so what if he spent the evening playing cards with Jon (who actually beats him more than once and not for Robb’s lack of trying?) before they ended up going to bed and calling it a night, well, months ago he’d have paid in order to spend it like _thati_ , so he thinks there’s nothing to complain about.

That is, until he feels _someone_ creeping up behind him in the early hours of the morning, _tentacles_ wrapping around his legs on his bed that’s definitely barely large enough for the both of them.

“Hey,” he whispers, turning over just to face those two dark eyes specked with gold. “Did you have a nice dinner?”

“Oh,” Theon grins, “sadly I couldn’t _finish_ it, not to raise questions, but what I could taste was delicious. Those poor daughters of Frey’s are really starved for a decent fuck, not that I can blame them from what I’ve seen.”

“And what did you find out?”

“She definitely will _not_ remember telling me the full list of her siblings involved with it. By the way, you were right. It was definitely a plan, and half of the family was in on it, and the other half had no way to object to it. All the male sons except one were in agreement, half of _their_ male sons were, too, and you were right about the poisoning — it was some four or five of his daughters preparing a _different_ dinner for your relatives.”

Knowing that he was right is _not_ giving him any joy, though. He keeps his voice low, moving closer. “So, you have the full list?”

“Hm, that I do. But I think I have even better news for you.”

“Such as?”

“Three weeks from now, one of the nieces gets married. Not one of the ones involved in your parents’s death, I’m afraid, but dear Walda — poor soul, that’s a horrid name — gets hitched to her guy in Frey’s mansion in the country, of course another one he bought after he moved from the previous. Then she and the husband are supposed to leave for a short honeymoon in some sad place in Wales, but the rest of the family is staying for the entire week-end. _Celebrating_.”

Robb _can_ see what Theon’s aiming at. “And you think —”

“Perfect chance to have all the people we need in the same place, isn’t it? By the way, the list amounts to exactly thirty-five people. I should thank you given that it’s more souls that I’ve had in this past three centuries,” he grins.

“I _like_ that,” Robb grins back.

“Then,” Theon goes on, a tentacle wrapping around Robb’s leg, _hard_ , “we’re back to the other question. Of course, we are not killing the ones who aren’t responsible, but we can absolutely single out the others. So, do you want it to be _huge_? Do you want it to be hush-hush and without too much fanfare? Do you want them to suffer? Do you want them not to? Hey, whatever you like. _You_ summoned me, after all, you call the shots.”

Robb _thinks_ about it. “Maybe an eye for an eye would be best. Poisoned food for them as well. But I want him to see _all_ the others die before he chokes on his own damned meat.”

“I suppose it’s doable. Do you want to sneak in as well? I think I can arrange it without a problem, though it would mean leaving your brother on his own for a good week or so, given the situation.”

Robb doesn’t like _that_ prospect, but the idea of being _there_ is alluring. “We’ll see, but if he thinks he can handle it, I won’t treat him like I’m doubting that on principle.”

“Fair,” Theon agrees. “Also, I don’t know if it’s _too much_ for your selfless, candid soul, but back _some_ centuries ago, there was _something_ I used to do in this kind of _avenging_ that I think you might want to hear.”

“Let’s hear it,” Robb says as Theon moves closer and whispers in his ear and _oh_ , for a moment he feels like vomiting, but after that first instinct sets in and imagines how it would go, exactly… he thinks that he _kind_ of wants to consider it, at least. _Candid_ soul. As if. He doubts it’s the case.

“What if I think about it?” He asks.

“Oh, you have three weeks and some to decide, darling, I am not in a hurry. And if I’m quiet, do you think you might give me a reward for all the nice work I put into your cause today?” Theon whispers against his neck.

“You only had to ask,” Robb grins back, and kisses him at once, their mouths slotting together perfectly as usual.

He can taste his revenge on Theon’s tongue, too, and it’s sweeter than any sugar he’s ever had in his entire life.

——

The next morning, Theon’s gone when Robb wakes up, but he had mentioned having to lay some groundwork on the Freys, and Robb cannot take any more leaves for now if he wants a new one for the wedding.

A wedding he _has_ to attend at all costs.

He looks at Jon who’s having his tea without saying a word — then again he never was too chatty before breakfast even _before_ , at least that hasn’t changed.

“Hey,” he says, “you _do_ know I wish I could stay, right?”

Jon sends him a look so unimpressed Robb could weep. “Robb, for — I know you have to work. I _know_. But I doubt _I_ can put food on the table now, can’t I?”

“Not your fault,” Robb says, wiping at his eyes. “But — I hope I can find something better soon. Are you doing all right?” He stares at Jon’s slightly shaking fingers. Jon follows his stare.

“It doesn’t happen often,” he says. “I’m fine. I mean, I guess it would be normal, right?”

_It’s even too little_ , Robb doesn’t say. He runs his fingers lightly over the place where that swell was — still flat. “I guess. Well then, you should have company soon. Have a nice day, all right?”

Jon nods and Robb heads downstairs.

It feels _too good_ , honestly, but again, he’s not going to look at gift horses in the mouth.

——

Jon’s staring at the table when the knock on the door happens again, punctual as usual, and — right. There _she_ is, he supposes, and it’s probably better than _that_.

Especially when he hasn’t told Robb that his fingers do shake _fairly often_ , but really, it’s probably just his body catching up with being awake.

He opens the door. And there she is, bright red hair and blue eyes and pretty smile and yesterday’s dress held against her chest, and —

Fuck.

_Fuck_. Why can’t he —

“Jon,” she grins. “Nice to see you up and about this time, too. You all right?”

“Oh. Yeah, I am, it’s just — fuck, I’m _honestly_ sorry, I just — I can’t remember —”

“Ygritte,” she smiles, not looking offended at all, for some kind of miracle. “Hey, as long as you remember who am I supposed to be, the name’s really not that much of a problem.”

He lets her in, shaking his head. “I just, I feel like I should —”

“Don’t. Really, I’m not offended. Still have a problem with those hands?”

He considers lying to her, but he feels his head _hurt_ and he doesn’t know if he can or if he even wants to.

“Some,” he admits, “but — I mean, I guess it’s normal, isn’t it?”

“I guess,” she says, slowly, “but — oh, just wait a moment. Can you bring that dress to the usual room?”

“Sure,” he says, taking carefully the bright orange gown and laying it down on the living room’s table, just under the window where the light pours in.

She’s back a moment later, with — what looks like an old scrap of fabric and her usual bunch of needles and thread. The scrap is white and there are a few straight lines drawn on it.

She sits down next to him and shoves the fabric and a needle with black thread already slipped inside it in his palm. “Can you sew?” She asks.

“Uh,” he says, “I I used to.” He _does_ remember what happened before he decided to jump from a window. Cat _did_ teach all of them to. “I don’t think I was very good at it, though.”

“Do you remember how to?”

“… Not really,” he admits, figuring it won’t hurt.

“Right. Then it’s good exercise if you want to help with your hand’s dexterity or whatever you call it.”

She grabs the needle and grabs the side of the piece of fabric. “This is a stem stitch and it’s the easiest. You pull it through the beginning point,” she says, pushing the needle through the beginning of the line she drew, then plunging it downwards until the thread is all lined up. “Then you go back where you started, pull,” she says, doing exactly that, “and then do it again, but _after_. Then you go back to where the first stitch ended and you go through it again. Not too hard, right?”

“Doesn’t look like it,” he admits.

She hands him the piece of fabric. “Great, then you go on while I work on the embroidering on this thing. Shit, they don’t pay me half of what they should, but what can a girl do, right?”

He shrugs in agreement, not too sure of what he should say, but she didn’t seem to expect one, and so while she starts working on her dress, he tries following the straight line.

By the end, it’s _not_ quite straight, but at least if you turn the piece of fabric on its side, the stitching is clean. He figures it could be worse.

——

“I have excellent news,” Theon tells Robb when he comes back home a couple of days later. “On _both_ my assignments.”

Robb grins at once, glad that for once he arrived before he went to bed but after Jon did, which means that they can steal some time for themselves in the kitchen.

“Do enlighten me.”

“Your aunt’s husband is doing so well that she has already fired five different maids.”

“Really?”

“I dropped by,” Theon says vaguely. “And asked a few questions around their neighborhood and the church just after people left mass. Apparently your aunt isn’t satisfied with anyone she hires on trial but she also absolutely does _not_ want to care for her precious husband herself, which is causing them _obvious_ issues. She’s really not having a great time.”

Robb should feel bad about how much he wants to _grin_ just thinking about it.

Except that he can’t. Fuck her sideways.

“Excellent news. And your second assignment?”

“ _Well_ , they’re looking for extra staff for the weekend of the nuptials. As in, more maids and so on, because apparently the entire family is coming, as in, also the ones who don’t live with him. Which means that if the two of us get there on time, we could absolutely blend in with the waiting staff, _and_ that would give us a fair advantage. Unless you only want me to be involved, you don’t _have_ to —”

“No,” Robb says at once. “If we can keep it to a few days, I want to come.”

“If you wish to use _my_ method for traveling, we would be in Wales in five minutes tops.”

Robb grins. “I _would_ try that, I think.”

“Good,” Theon says, white teeth glinting in the moonlight. “And do you think we could celebrate? Because I do get by but let me tell you, sex with _you_ is really something else.”

“Theon, sex with _you_ is something else,” Robb says, breathless, and if a moment later they’ve locked themselves in the bathroom and the whole tile is covered in black and gold tentacles and his clothes are ripped, but _who cares_. He can spare a couple of shirts, _now_.

——

The wedding is, _thankfully_ , on a Friday, which means that he only has to take _that_ day free from work. Which means that he puts in a few extra hours every day in order to have his boss give it to him without too much of a fuss, which of course means that he wishes he could keep an eye on Jon more but he has to settle for Ygritte being there the whole day. Admittedly, she says she doesn’t mind and she jokes about at least having someone to keep her company for real, and apparently she’s giving him basic sewing lessons and from what he sees he’s doing good enough work for someone with occasionally shaking fingers.

Still —

“Are you _really_ going to be fine if I leave for four days at most?” He asks him the Monday before the damned wedding. Jon sends him another non-impressed look that is the exact same as he used to back in the day when he thought Robb was being an idiot. Honestly, he could cry just looking at it.

“I’ve been fine until now, haven’t I?” Jon asks.

“Yeah, sure, but — shit, it’s about the whole deal with the Freys, otherwise I wouldn’t have.”

“Robb.” Jon reaches over, covering Robb’s hand with his. Shit, Robb can’t help noticing, he always was pale but six months indoors have _really_ done a number on him — in comparison to his own, Jon’s skin looks almost ghastly white. “I _know_. And — whatever happened this last year, you _could_ have just let me die and you didn’t, and even if you wanted five days to — enjoy yourself or _something_ , you’d deserve them. Really.” Grey eyes lock with his and Robb can’t help thinking that even if Theon had only ever made sure Jon would wake up, _that_ would have been enough.

“All right,” Robb says, “but — don’t worry, if I wanted to _enjoy myself_ I’d bring you with. Just — if you need anything just tell Ygritte or Mr. Dayne downstairs, he’s a decent guy and he’s let me take more days off than most people would’ve. All right?”

Jon seems to flinch a bit when he says Ygritte’s name, but then he kind of smiles and nods. “Sure. I will. But Robb, honestly, don’t worry. I’m good. I will be.”

He sounds maybe _a bit_ too sure.

But fine enough. Maybe he’s just being overprotective. Of course he is.

——

On Friday morning, Robb packs a light bag, gives Jon a bone-crushing hug before heading downstairs and meets Theon right outside the door.

“So,” Robb says, “what is _your way_ of traveling to Wales?”

“I can’t show you _here_ ,” Theon grins, “but do follow me.”

Robb does, until they reach some kind of abandoned yard half an hour from his place. It’s full of dry grass, but that’s about it.

“Is this place _special_ or something?”

“Oh,” Theon says, “there are gateways to Hell that are _always_ open, for us residents. And there are gateways in Wales as well. And _we_ can travel in between them very quickly.”

Oh. _Oh_. “But — if you can, why —”

“Why are we stuck down in Hell? Eh, see, Hell has _levels_. That’s just the outer one. Most of us are stuck way beneath it, and in order to leave _there_ , we need to be summoned. But if you only travel through the outer one, it’s pretty much free reign. Then again, most of us can’t just go back _here_ after our job is done, so it can only be used by demons currently on assignments.”

“I see,” Robb says, figuring it’s a good thing, otherwise they’d have demons roaming the Earth and no need for necromancers. “So, that means I’m going to —”

“Travel through Hell? Sure you will,” Theon grins, looking ecstatic, and Robb should _maybe_ be scared, but at this point? Fuck him, that sounds _almost_ exciting. Theon recites some incantation under his breath and suddenly a black circle with red ripples inside appears in the ground, the dry grass disappearing from sight at once.

“Right,” Theon says, “it’s true form down there. If I were you I’d hold on to my shoulders _real_ tight.”

Robb nods, doing that as Theon’s legs disappear into the usual sea of tentacles accommodating Robb’s knees, and a moment later Theon tells him to hold on and they’re falling through the portal.

Holy —

Robb doesn’t even know if he has the _words_ for it, because all of a sudden everything around him is _dark_ and hot and he can’t see shit because Theon is running _fast_ , incredibly fast, and while the wind hitting his cheeks is warm it’s also _sharp_ — he has to hide his head behind Theon’s neck at some point because he feels like it’s going to make him cry, and then everything is _hotter_ and hotter. Theon’s tentacles wrap around his back, keeping him steady, and when he looks up he sees that everything around him is a red, _red_ blur, and the air smells of sulphur and it’s almost enough to make him feel like throwing up, but he grasps Theon’s middle instead and closes his eyes when the red becomes too much and they start to _hurt_ —

And then Theon stops and jumps upwards and he says something else under his breath and they’re _out_ in the middle of some Welsh field covered by a grey, cloudy sky and Robb thinks that he can’t breathe properly anymore.

“Holy _shit_ ,” he says, “that was — that was —”

“What? Creepy? Scary?”

“Well, it was scary, but it was — shit. It was _amazing_. I can’t — I can barely believe it happened to me, you know?”

“Oh, it most certainly did,” Theon says, patting down his new trousers as his tentacles have just shaped back into legs. “And Frey’s mansion is a mile from here. By the way, you need to tell me _how_ you want this to go before we get there, because while I did lay down my groundwork these few weeks, the moment we walk in I need to stick to one plan.”

“Let me consider until we get there?”

“Be my guest. You are the one taking decisions here, Stark. Not me.”

Robb knows that.

Robb knows that, _indeed_.

——

“Look at that, another couple weeks and you could move to cross stitching,” Ygritte says as her lips curl in a smile that he finds pretty regardless of a few crooked teeth, and Jon is just grateful that this morning she introduced herself the moment she met his eyes instead of him having to ask her name all over again — _fuck_ , he doesn’t know how it just won’t stick when everything else about her _has_ , and he hates it because it makes him feel like his head is working wrong and he’s woken up _wrong_ , but it just… won’t.

Fuck, he really hopes it’s temporary.

“That’s encouraging,” he sighs, thinking she’s _way_ too optimistic — he has stitched half of her discarded pieces of fabric and he still can’t go _perfectly_ straight but she was right when she said it’d help with dexterity, since his hands do shake less these days.

“Don’t sound like _that_ ,” she says as she moves her needle through a dark blue flower on the hem of the pale azure dress she’s been sewing for the last few days. “Hey, good stitching sells, if anything when you get good you might make some money out of it.”

He looks down at his sad set of squares drawn on some of that white fabric, which is better than his last efforts but nowhere near decent, he thinks. “In years, I guess.”

“Oh, don’t be so hard on yourself. You know nothing if you think that can’t improve, since you _already_ improved a hell of a lot in what, two weeks? Three? By the way, not to be nosy, but what are you doing tonight if Robb’s out with his handsome lawyer friend?”

_Handsome?_

“Do you think they’re _involved_?”

“From the way they look at each other, I’d be surprised if they weren’t. What, you’ve got a problem with that?”

_As if_ he would say a word _even if he did_. “No,” he says, shrugging. “If he’s happy, I’m happy for him. He deserves it, after —” He can’t even bring himself to finish that sentence.

“Hey,” she says, barely even looking at her flower, but he figures she could do that with her eyes closed. “Listen, I’ve met your brother when he moved here and it was, uh, just after they washed their hands off you at the hospital. He certainly is happier _now_ , and he was angry at a lot of people, but he never was angry at _you_ and he never saw keeping you alive as a hardship, so stop feeling sorry about it and finish that stitching. And answer the previous question.”

“What — I think — sorry, what was the first question?”

“What are you doing tonight if he’s not here,” she smiles, and good thing she sounds amused rather than irked.

Oh. That.

“Honestly? I — I had no plans. I mean, he left me some money so I suppose it can’t be too hard to get downstairs and buy some food.” _If I don’t fuck it up somehow but how hard can it be?_ “I mean, I could try and get back into reading but it’s not working out too well.”

“Meaning?”

He shrugs. “I didn’t tell Robb,” he sighs, “I don’t want him to worry and I guess it’s just a side effect, but if I try to read anything it’s — I feel like I _should_ make sense of it but it doesn’t add up.”

“Don’t push yourself too much,” she says, “if you could do it before, you can do it again, but you don’t have to do it _now_. Anyway, since it seems like your plans are barely _plans_ and I’m always on my own for dinner, if you want we could buy that food together?”

“Oh, sure,” he breathes in relief. If she goes with him, he can just let her handle it _and_ just concentrate on being out properly for the first time since —

Since he woke up.

“Good,” she grins. “Then I’ll just go back at mine when the light’s gone, change some and I’ll be here again. I haven’t got dinner out in ages, might as well do it once in a while.”

“I doubt I’ll be going anywhere,” he sighs, going back to his terrible stitching.

“Sorry I’m not going to wear anything as pretty as _this_ ,” she says, sounding just maybe serious enough that he picks up on it.

“And why not? I mean, you could make one for yourself. You’d look nice in that kind of clothes, I think.” He knows he sounds awkward as hell, but it’s true. She _would_.

She laughs, shaking her head. “You know nothing, even if it’s sweet of you to say. But this kind of fabric is too pricey for me to actually _buy_ for myself. People buy it for me along with the service, but in order to buy some of this I’d need to have you buy me dinner for a month and that’s not going to happen. I’ll live with what I have,” she says, her eyes going back to the embroidering as she swaps her blue thread with some green so she can move on to the leaves.

It was a fair point, Jon thinks, but it still is unfair. She _would_ look pretty in one of those dresses.

He also is honestly glad that she offered to get the food, but —

She’s right. He shouldn’t rush things. He shouldn’t.

——

Ygritte leaves when the sun goes down, saying she’ll be back as soon as she has changed out of her work pants and shirt and put something less worn-out. He says he’ll wait and doesn’t change out of his own clothes, mostly because they’re not worn out (Robb bought him new ones a few days ago and dropped them on the bed without even wanting to hear thanks for it). He honestly doesn’t like how that white shirt looks on him, though, because he’s way too pale and it makes him look like some kind of ghost, but he’ll hardly complain about it, and he’s probably just — overthinking this.

He gets a glass of water, cleans it, grabs one of Robb’s books and slams it closer in disgust the moment he realizes the letters keep on not making any bloody sense and then he hears a sound knock on the door.

Right. It has to be Ygritte, he’s sure it can’t take that long to change into the clothes she usually wears, so he doesn’t even look out of the peephole before opening the door.

The moment he does, he immediately tries to slam it closed because that’s not Ygritte, that’s _Robb’s aunt_ , and just seeing her makes his stomach turn over, but he’s not fast enough and she steps in before he can, full knowing he would take a few steps back rather than pushing her out.

“Where’s your brother?” She asks, and — shit, _shit_ , it’s the exact tone she used when she told him he should feel lucky they even gave him a roof to live under, but — all right. All right, if she wants Robb then she’ll probably leave if he says he’s not in, right?

“He’s — out,” he says. “For a few days.”

_Please just leave_ , he thinks, knowing that she most likely won’t but hoping she will.

“He’s _out_.”

“He _is_.”

She stares at him, her lips thinning. “Did he get tired of your chattering already?”

Fuck. _Sure she’d say that._ He’s not going to let her get to him. She ruined his life and Robb’s once already, he’s not doing that again.

“No,” he says. “He had — business to attend to.”

“What _business_ should your brother attend to?”

“I’m not going to tell _you_ out of everyone,” he forces himself to say. He’s handling this better than he had thought he might a week ago. Good. “Now — will you _leave_?”

“Surely you haven’t gained any manners since we saw each other last, _Jon_.”

He flinches. He can’t help it. Not when she’s the reason he’s like _this_ and he can’t remember the damned name of the damned neighbor and when she’s the reason Robb looked ten years older to him when he woke up than he had when Jon wrote that letter and jumped —

“I don’t think,” he says, slow, “that I should use them for _you_.”

“How interesting, it’s exactly what your brother told me the last time we saw each other.”

“Then maybe you should understand the point already.” His head is bloody pounding so much it hurts, and he suddenly feels like he wants to throw up the meager lunch he had, but — he’s not going to give her the satisfaction.

He hopes, at least.

She keeps on staring at him and fuck, why is she getting angry, _why_ , he just wants her to leave him alone already, _fuck_ —

“I can’t believe that _you_ got off so easy,” she spits, and a moment later she has a hand in his hair and she’s angling his head upwards so he’s forced to look at her and _no_ , shit, he can’t look at her he _can’t_ — “While _he_ has to —” She starts, then she tugs _harder_.

_He_ — who is she even talking about? He has no idea and he doesn’t want to know and the last time she had her hands on him she tore hair off his scalp and Robb never knew about _that_ but —

He tries to get away but suddenly his legs aren’t working and his hands are shaking harder than they have since he woke up all over again, and shit but just having her nearby is making him sick. Her other hand grabs his wrist and her nails are digging hard enough he’s sure he’ll bleed and he _hates_ her fuck he _hates_ her —

“I don’t know,” he says, and he hates that his voice sounds so thin now but it’s a miracle he hasn’t fainted already and he wishes Robb was here but he’s not and he should handle her but he _can’t_ — “Let me go,” he says, and it sounds weaker than he had wanted it to be, damn it damn it _damn it_ —

“You don’t even deserve to be breathing,” she spits, and she’s looking at him with the same disdain she always had, and shit, shit, he’s going to be sick, he _is_ , he can feel that water rising up his throat, and she obviously notices because she lets him go and takes a harsh step back just as he crashes to the ground and throws up on the ground, and shit is he tasting bile —

Lysa makes a disgusted sound and he wants to tell her that it’s her damned bloody fault but he’s not even sure he can speak without vomiting all over again.

“But I suppose cockroaches just never die, do they?”

No, _no_ , why is he thinking about that time Robb never knew about because she had forced him to look after his cousin while he was sick and Baelish got angry at him for something he can’t even remember and they locked him up for the night in that damned storage room in the basement and there were fucking cockroaches walking all over the floor and a few crawled up on his ankles and —

He’s throwing up again before he can try to stop himself from doing it, and now it’s on his damned clothes, too, and he just wants her to fucking _leave_ but she obviously won’t and she’s obviously happy to see him in such distress, and he just wishes he had thrown up on _her_ —

“Guess what, I was just thinking the same.”

_What_ —

That was Ygritte, wasn’t —

He forces himself to look up just in time to see a hand clamp down on Lysa’s shoulder. She turns and —

Ygritte _is_ behind her and Jon hopes she’ll just grab Lysa’s shoulders and push her out, but instead she raises up her hand and… _slaps Robb’s aunt across the face_?

She doesn’t do that lightly, either. She does it hard enough that Lysa recoils from it and her cheek turns bright red.

“Except I think the one I just slapped can’t be killed stepping on it. Too bad.”

“Wait, _you_ were —”

“I’m the neighbor you really disliked last time, and I swear to everything I bloody hold dear, if your prissy rich arse isn’t out of this door in five seconds, you’ll be out of it with your nose broken.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Lysa replies, but then Ygritte just smiles and curls her fingers into a fist.

“Fine,” she says. “I hit hard, just so you know.”

Oh. Oh. She’s serious, Jon realizes, and Lysa obviously does as well because she immediately takes a step back towards the door then two, and then she stops and looks about to say something but Ygritte isn’t having any of that.

“ _Out_ ,” Ygritte says, “and if you show up again when Robb’s not around to tell you to fuck off already I’m not warning you before I break your nose _and_ your jaw. Clear?”

Lysa stares at her for a moment and then storms away down the stairs and he finally feels like he can breathe properly, hell, had he been holding his breath until now?, and _now_ he’s realizing fully that there’s vomit all over the floor and his clothes and he _hates_ it, and now what is she even going to think —

“What a stuck up bitch,” she says, and then he looks down at the ground because he doesn’t know if he can look at _her_.

He hears her walking towards the kitchen, he thinks, and then she’s back and her feet are hitting the ground and she’s — cleaning up the floor?

“You shouldn’t —” He croaks, and then he tastes vomit on his tongue and he feels like he could throw up all over again, and so he shuts his mouth.

“You know nothing,” she says, but it’s — not mocking or ill-meant. “It’s fine. Nothing I haven’t seen already. Still, too bad none of this caught her dress, she’d have deserved it.”

He wants to laugh, maybe, but right now he doesn’t think he can even _move_ , not when he’s still thinking of those damned roaches walking all over his feet and hands and at how he could barely see them in the dark and so he couldn’t even try to kill them, and then they were in his hair too and he had forgotten that and _why is he remembering it instead of_ —

His stomach spasms, but he keeps it down. He has a feeling he has nothing else to throw up in him anymore. “Hey, wait,” she says, and takes a handkerchief out of her skirt’s pocket and wait, it’s _nice_ clothing, it’s _embroidered,_ for —

He’s about to tell her not to but she’s used it to clean off his chin before he can, and at least now it’s only on his shirt, but he still feels dirty the way he had when he was in that damned storage room —

“Jon.” Her hand’s on his shoulder, grasping hard but not enough to hurt. “ _What_ is it.” She doesn’t ask, which is probably a good thing. “And I don’t mean _in general_. I think I figured that out myself.”

He doesn’t look at her. “Once — her husband got angry at me.” He breathes in. “Robb wasn’t — wasn’t around that day or the next one.” He hates how much his voice is shaking, but he’s not sure he can say it better. “I spent the night in their storage room. It was cold. And — it was crawling with roaches. All over.” He fights down another spasm, barely noticing Ygritte cursing under her breath.

“How long ago?”

He shakes his head. “A week before I jumped,” he whispers. “Please don’t tell Robb. He doesn’t know.” Fuck, he _doesn’t_ want Robb to know that, _ever_ , because then he’d feel even guiltier and that’s not what he wants. He never wanted him to in the first place.

“I won’t,” she says, and he believes her just from the tone. Then she moves a hand to the back of his head, but she doesn’t grab — she just runs her thumb all over his skin and she can probably feel all the cold sweat that’s coiled in the back. “Hey,” she goes on, “maybe we should just forget going out, I can draw you a bath at my place and I can put together some dinner over there.”

It sounds nice. Damn, it _does_ , but —

“I can’t remember where the keys are,” he sobs.

“It’s all right,” she says, her fingertips tentatively running against his hairline and it feels so _different_ he could weep. “You can just sleep at my place until he’s back, I don’t mind. And I can do without your living room for a bit. So?”

Suddenly, not being _here_ sounds like a great prospect. “Please,” he whispers, barely hearing himself, feeling like his head is damn bleeding, and a moment later she’s helped him up and dragged him out of the house, closing the door behind her. His stomach still feels like he could throw up all over again and he can feel those damned things crawling over his skin even if he knows they aren’t _there_ , damn it —

“I’ll get the bath running,” Ygritte says, dragging him out of that train of thought, thankfully. “Only good thing about this flat, it has running water. If you have to be sick again it’s _fine_ , just try to warn me first. No problem if you can’t.”

He nods, not trusting himself to talk, but he’s _not_ going to do it in her house. He just has to hold it together until he can’t feel nails digging into his scalp anymore, or her voice hissing in his ear, or —

No. _No_. He can’t go there or he’ll end up thinking about all the reasons why jumping out of that window had seemed a good idea at the time and he shouldn’t do that, not when he knows he just made things _worse_ for everyone involved. He stares down at his hands which are shaking beyond control now, so much for all the progress he made about _that_ lately, and he’s fairly sure he’s crying but he doesn’t know when he started — he wipes at his face with trembling fingers that come away wet and he still can taste vomit in the back of his throat.

He wants to close his eyes but if he does he knows he’ll feel like he’s back in that damned cellar —

Then he jerks when a hand touches his arm. “Almost done,” Ygritte says, holding out a hand. He grabs her wrist and lets her help him up until they reach her tiny but extremely clean bathroom — the tub is barely enough for him and just if he bends his legs, he thinks, but there’s heat coming from the water inside it and he suddenly feels so tired he can barely stand.

“If you need help getting in there just ask,” she says, turning her back on him, and he wants to cry at the thoughtfulness of it because he couldn’t have told her that he’d have felt even worse if she had to do it without being asked.

Right. He doesn’t even attempt to take his shirt off properly and he tears it out as he gets out of it — he’s sorry about it, really, but he knows he can’t wear it again — and manages to get out of his dirty trousers without needing to ask Ygritte to do it and he kicks them to the corner along with his underwear and he slips into the tub just before his legs give out completely.

The water is scalding hot but honestly, it’s better like that. If only he had the force of will to start getting clean for real it’d be better, but he doesn’t know if he can. Not when he still feels bile at the back of his throat.

If anything, now he doesn’t feel like he’ll lose it at every other moment. At least it’s burning hot and not cold like in that basement —

“One-time offer,” Ygritte says, and fuck but he’s glad she’s talking. He looks up at her and she’s sitting on the edge of the tub with some soap in her hands. “I usually don’t offer people to wash their backs, but I’m making an exception. Yes or no?”

He doesn’t think he could do it now, as much as he wishes it wasn’t the case.

“Thank you,” he croaks, bending over, and her hand’s on his back a moment later running soap all over his shoulders, and he’s _really_ glad her fingers are all rough and with short nails because they’re the complete opposite of — yeah, he’s not going there _now_. He lets her do it until her hands move up to his hair, carding through it so gently he almost breaks down crying again except for entirely different reasons, running over that damn scar he has on the back of his head that’s hurting like _hell_ right now. Then she goes over that place where Lysa had torn that hair back in the day, but he figures his hair’s even there now because she doesn’t seem to notice anything’s wrong there and then again _he_ is the only one who knows, right?

He’s _tired_ , damn it.

He closes his eyes when Ygritte tells him that she has to rinse soap off his hair, only opening them after he’s wiped water off his face with his wrist.

“Right,” she says, “I’ll find you something to wear, I’m sure I have a few things your size in the pile of men’s clothes I never managed to sell. Catch.”

She hands him a towel — right. He can handle it. He waits until she’s gone, steps out of the tub slowly and manages to dry himself off and tie the whole thing around his chest. It’s cold outside the tub but it’s miles better than —

“Here,” she says, coming back in with a few dark pieces of clothing in her hands. “I’ve had this stuff for two years, guess no one’s buying it at this point. I’m right outside.”

She leaves them on the small chair attached to the wall. He leaves the towel on the tub’s edge and checks the clothes — no underwear, obviously she wouldn’t have _that_ , but there are a pair of pitch black trousers that only need lacing in the front and a shirt thankfully without buttons but with laces in the front and he has no idea if he can handle _that_ right now.

Never mind. He puts on the trousers, his bare feet moving on to the dry, cold stone pavement after. And then he feels a sharp spike of pain shoot through the back of his skull and he knows he’s never going to manage the shirt. He notices that she left a glass of water on the sink — he drinks some and spits it and _finally_ his mouth doesn’t taste filthy anymore, and then he opens the door with the shirt uselessly held between his shaking fingertips.

“Could — could you give me a hand with this?” He asks as he walks out of the door, hating how unsure he sounds and how much his head feels like it’s going to fucking explode.

“Sure,” she says, taking the shirt. “Just hold your arm out — _holy fuck_.”

Right. She did wash his back so she probably noticed the flogging scars. But she hasn’t really _seen_ the palm of his right hand up close until now, _has she_?

She stares at it for a moment, then she shakes her head and puts the shirt on him, starting to lace it from the bottom upwards.

“It was her,” he sighs, figuring she’s owed an explanation. “The day before I —”

“You don’t have to explain it if you don’t want to,” she replies, but he shakes his head.

“I don’t even remember what set her off,” he shrugs. “She dragged me to the kitchen and had me put it on the stove until it started bleeding and she got worried that it might’ve been too much.” Shit, his head is pounding harder with every damned word he says.

All things considered, maybe it _was_ too much. It’s not as evident now, but it’s obvious that the skin was burned off there, and he hasn’t asked Robb if he figured it out, but he must have.

A moment later, Ygritte finally ties the last knot. “I kind of hope she shows up again,” she says then, “so I can have an excuse to break her damned nose for real.”

_What_ —

“Too bad I didn’t do it the first time we ran into each other.”

She sounds _serious_ , damn it, and maybe that’s what seals it, but a moment later he doesn’t think he has the strength to hold himself up anymore and good thing she notices and catches his arm before he can completely lose equilibrium. She seems to consider the situation, then kicks the nearest door open. He can barely notice that it’s a bedroom before she helps him down on the bed. She looks at him as if she’s about to ask whether she should leave or not, but then she decides not to because then she kicks off her shoes and sits up on the bed, her hand going to the back of his head again, and he’s too tired to do anything but moving his forehead against her leg. His head’s still pounding but not as hard.

Maybe he can just close his eyes one moment and see if it goes away, right?

Can’t hurt, _right_?

——

_I should probably clean up the place_ , Ygritte thinks not long later, except that Jon’s about dead to the world and he has that hand with the abysmal burn clutching at her skirt and she has a feeling moving would be a bad idea right _now_.

She should have just invited him over, but how was she supposed to know that dreadful aunt of Robb’s would show up just in the ten minutes it took her to change into proper clothes? And of course there’s no way she can contact Robb now since he said he wouldn’t be anywhere she could telegraph, as if she has the money for it. Well, she just hopes it takes him those four days he said he’d be away for, mostly because he’ll want to know _this_ happened.

To think that for being in a _coma_ until a month ago, he was doing miraculously well. Not that Ygritte buys into religion in the first place, but given how bad both his and Robb’s luck has turned out as far as she knows, good thing, right? And _now_ she doesn’t know if this entire mess might set the entire situation back, but — well, she’ll find out in the morning, she supposes. And they didn’t even have dinner, but she doesn’t feel like eating now and she’s one hundred percent sure that if _he_ ate anything right now he’d throw it up. She’ll worry about it in the morning as well, at this point.

She wonders how bad Robb is going to take this and she decides it’s not going to be pretty when he comes back, not at all, and she can’t blame him — his aunt is a bloody fucking piece of work, and if Robb and Jon are roughly the same age he was sixteen when she happened to him and _fine_ , at sixteen she had about ran from the orphanage she had grown up in after the last nun on the long list of religious servants she ran into who hadn’t understood shit about their life calling had tried to raise a hand on her and she broke her wrist in return. But hell, at least she had long made peace with the fact that her entire family was dead and she had to fend for herself. Sure as fuck _her_ relatives wouldn’t have locked her in a damned room full of cockroaches. Honest, she can understand why he jumped off the bloody window, and it’s even more of a pity because she can see that he’s a _nice_ person with a nice personality if somewhat brooding, and if he’s the kind of person she enjoys spending time with now, what if she’s wondered _how_ he was before he tried to kill himself?

Well, from what Robb’s told her, it seems like he was all of that and also that while he didn’t talk much it always wasn’t wasted breath when he did, and that if he loved someone he did it quietly but fiercely, and she _can_ see that now.

Surely she can see why Robb’s spent six months and so on _not_ letting him die.

He shudders a bit as he curls closer to her leg — right. It’s cold. She should get him under the covers without waking him up or at least get him a blanket, except that then she hears someone else knocking on Robb’s door from the other side of hers.

Loudly.

What the hell.

She slowly moves away from Jon, fixing the pillow under his head so he doesn’t wake up, and if she feels a fairly strong impulse to kiss his forehead when he turns over to follow her warmth, she’ll think about it later.

She walks quickly over to the door and opens it a crack.

And she almost swears out loud when she sees _who_ is out of the damned door.

She grabs her keys, then locks the door softly behind her.

Then she moves up behind Robb’s aunt and grabs her arm in what she hopes is a painful lock — she _did_ learn to get by in that damned orphanage, thanks and whatnot.

“I see,” she says, “that you didn’t understand how serious I was before.”

“Who — _you_ again?”

“I don’t know why are you so fucking interested in what these two do with their life when you certainly did your worst to ruin it, but I was clear enough, I think. Now, do you want to leave or do you want me to break your wrist? Because it’s going to take me a moment.”

“Let me guess, _he_ ’s in your flat, isn’t he?”

“I wasn’t going to leave him _there_ , and not just because I’m Robb’s friend,” she says. “Now, _again_ , what part of _don’t show up here unless you want me to break your arm_ didn’t you understand?”

“As if you would,” she says.

Oh, _really_.

“And I’m not leaving it alone until Robb comes to his senses and pulls his own weight.”

“As far as your husband is concerned? I don’t think he will care when he learns about the room with the cockroaches, and be sure it’s going to be the first thing I tell him the moment he’s back.”

“I don’t even think you can begin to understand,” she starts.

“From what I know? I understand even too much.” She grabs her arm closer, turns her towards the stairs. “Now, if you knew what’s good for you, you would get down those stairs and never show up again. And don’t even try of coming back with the cops or anything of the kind because the moment they see the state of his hand never mind _everything else_ , you’d have to answer a few questions, _especially_ since as far as I know, they should still be under your care. Sorry your husband’s got unlucky. You can deal with it on your own.” She tries to make sure her tone is adequately angry. “Clear?”

“Just _let me go_ ,” Robb’s aunt spits out, and Ygritte does, pushing her down the stairs so she _has_ to take a couple of steps. “This isn’t over here.”

“If you had some sense, it’d be. Fuck off,” she says, and gets back in the house before locking it for good measure. What a complete waste of breath, Ygritte thinks as she walks back inside the bedroom. Where _of course_ Jon is looking up at her from the bed because that noise woke him up, but she hasn’t seen him looking so confused since he woke up again, which she supposes is Not Good.

She sits back down on the bed. “Hey,” she says, putting a hand on his arm. “What’s wrong?”

“I thought —” He starts. “There were roaches everywhere,” he says, sounding like he’s about to faint. “But —”

Shit. _Shit_ , now Ygritte really wishes she _had_ broken her nose. “There aren’t here,” she says, laying down on the bed. His hand twitches before it starts trembling all over again.

No, this is not good whatsoever. Robb should be here for this, but Robb _isn’t_ and —

Screw it. She helps him to his feet, then pulls the covers back and helps him lay back down, then she changes into her only good nightshirt that she put together herself with leftover clothing from what white silk gowns she stitched for her usual clients, then moves back on the bed and raises an arm, figuring she’ll see what happens —

A moment later, he’s turned over and put an arm around her waist very, very tentatively as his head moves against the crook of her neck.

All right, then.

She puts an arm around his back and her free hand goes back to his hair.

“Sorry,” she hears him say a moment later, sounding like he’s about to cry.

“Darling, it’s _fine_ ,” she says, not knowing where that had come from but she doubts his aunt ever called him like _that_ , so it can’t hurt, and as he moves closer she figures he didn’t mind, and she decides that if things don’t change before Robb is back, it could be plenty worse.

Shit.

She _really_ hopes he’s back soon. What should he even do that it’d take him four full days, anyway?


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> AAAAND HAVE THE EXTRA PROBLEMATIC PART WITH CANON-LEVEL OF FUCKED UP EXCEPT WITH MORE DEMON DEALS AND SHIT which then turns into 'hey remember that you write things that end well get on it'. Idek. Happy Halloween again guys. THERE'S A DEAD DOVE WARNING IN THE TAGS FOR A REASON D:
> 
> Also: there's a part of this at the end that has BACKSTORY OF THE BACKSTORY and has very minor jaime/brienne-that-happened-years-before. If you don't care for it it's at the end, and if you ship J/C sorry feel free to skim. I warned you. xD Also ghsdjgkl hello this is the least morally sound thing I ever wrote in my entire life idek. HAPPY HALLOWEEN.

“So,” Theon asks, “you still undecided?”

Robb sighs, staring at the mansion in the distance. “It’s tempting. It’s really tempting. I just — it’s a _lot_.”

“More than planning the deaths of about forty people, give or take?”

It’s not that Theon’s trying to push him in that direction or anything, even if in theory he _should_ since he’s a demon and everything. But hell, it’s one of the options that you always lay on the table when it comes to enacting revenges during dinners and banquets and so on — it’s a _classic_ dating to Ancient Greece at least if not earlier, it’s just something you _do_ ask people if they have such an assignment for you. And the fact that Robb didn’t say at once to not go for it means that he has to ask again, just in case.

“You’re right,” Robb says. “But I don’t know. Fuck, I —”

“Robb, I think we wanna hide now,” Theon hisses before grabbing Robb and dragging him behind a nearby tree just as a couple people come up the road. He recognizes them at once — it’s one of the firstborns of Lord Walder’s, Lothar, then Merrett which was from another wife, plus some other half-brother of his whose name Theon cannot recall. He wasn’t in the memories of that one girl he bedded, so he definitely wasn’t in on the masterplan.

“So,” Lothar grins as they walk up the road, “see the new mansion?”

“Impressive,” the unnamed brother says. “It’s five times the old one.”

“Well,” Merrett shrugs, “no loss if you ask me. The old one was ancient, damp and about to fall on itself. That sell took a long way to happen but wasn’t that worth it.”

“Even if —” The unnamed brother says.

“Shush,” Lothar silences him, “it’s just us but you can never know. And of course it was worth it. Two bloody idiots too attached to that useless land and their noisy brats against _that_ and all the money we have now? No questions.”

“But didn’t two of them survive?” The brother says. “I mean, I wasn’t here for it, so —”

“Ah, whatever,” Merrett says. “One of them wasn’t even _theirs_ , it was… I think the aunt’s illegitimate son or _something_. I heard he jumped from a window last year and has been barely alive ever since. The other one… who even cares. He’s what, seventeen now? He’ll get some money out of his aunt and go on with his life, unless he dies out of caring for his _brother_ if he so feels like it. He could’ve been dead with his relatives, right?”

“Well, you two sure can see the positive side in this story. Then again, if people cannot see good opportunities in life… too bad,” the unnamed one says.

“Well said, Jared, well said. So, shall we? The wedding is tomorrow and I want to be well-rested.”

They all clap each other on the shoulder and leave on their merry way towards the mansion.

Theon thinks he knows how Robb will look like when he turns back —

Right.

He looks like a man who’d break down in anger the damned tree they’re hiding behind, if he could.

“Does that face mean you reached a decision?”

“Yes,” Robb says. “Do — I mean, let’s do it.”

“Hey, you don’t have to —”

“Theon, I’m telling you to do it, I should at least get my hands dirty. But yes. I just — I can’t — they don’t even feel _halfway_ sorry for it. Not at all. I mean, at least — I _thought_ about it, damn it!”

“Your conscience sounds lovely,” Theon tries to joke back — Robb scowls, shaking his head.

“Never mind. Right. It was _your_ idea. How would you go about it?”

“Well, tomorrow is the wedding feast and we don’t want to get involved with it since you did say you don’t want the ones not involved in it to be part of, well, _your_ banquet.”

“Of course I _don’t_.”

“Good. We’ll just hang around cleaning stuff around and so on, but we need to focus ourselves on two, three of them who were part of the ruse but wouldn’t be immediately missed. I mean, as much as I can see that you _would_ like seeing Lothar in the predicament I described you, people would notice if he was missing.”

“Fair enough. And then —”

“Then, unless you can actually _bake pies_ , which I doubt you can, and I cannot either, we just have to make sure that the meat on the slab the next morning for the people who _actually_ can cook them is the _right_ meat.”

“So — tomorrow night?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll do most of the work. You couldn’t do it on your own anyway.”

Robb nods, breathing in and out. “Right. Fine. And then —”

“On Saturday, those pies will be ready for dinner and I’ll make sure that whoever should _not_ be there, will not be there. And you can watch them die while the door is locked.”

Robb’s tentative grin is shaky, but he does look convinced.

Good, because the moment they walk inside that mansion, there’s no going back.

——

“ _What_ did you say you just _did_?” Robb hisses the moment they’re out of the main hall.

“Oh,” Theon grins back, “I enchanted their glasses. I mean, nothing’s going to happen until later tonight when they’re back in their rooms. _Then_ they definitely won’t be complaining when I move them out of their beds.”

Robb nods again, trying to steer himself. For a moment he’s tempted to tell Theon to go back on it and just poison the regular pies and be done with that, but —

One of them is that asshole from yesterday who was discussing about _opportunities in life_.

Another, Rhaegar (how ironic that he has the same name as Jon’s _technical_ father, not that they ever saw him in the flesh, Robb thinks)… well, Robb walked in front of his table while bringing new wine jugs and he wishes he could forget hearing _too bad for our former neighbors but they went looking for it and if they just were reasonable we wouldn’t have had to have them taste the consequences_ , but he doubts he will anytime soon.

The third, Symond — Robb hasn’t _heard_ anything from him, but according to what Theon had learned from his Frey conquest before, he had been the one bribing the town police so they wouldn’t even spend a week over his family’s death before declaring it a tragic accident, and — if he _thinks_ about it he feels like he could choke them both with his bare hands, but no.

He has to wait and he _will_.

“So what now?”

“Well, I don’t know about _you_ , but another Walda who’s not the bride and not _legitimate_ and is therefore sitting in the back of the room _and_ who apparently picked some of the poisonous plants that went into your parents’s food is obviously feeling very alone right now and I burned a lot of energy during that trip,” he shrugs. “I have to make sure I can feed myself this evening, so with your permission —”

“Oh. Right. Sure, just — come get me when it’s time.”

“Will do,” Theon grins, turning his back on him and heading back inside the main hall.

Robb’s duties are technically done — the feast is about over, people are trickling out of the room, _he_ has been dismissed from his work until tomorrow and so he heads for the common room he’s sharing with another four occasional workers who are here just for the wedding. His heart is hammering in his chest and he can’t help thinking all over, _I told Theon to go for it, I agreed to that, what does that make me_ , but then he thinks of the utter carelessness with which his parents’s death was dismissed, and what that Merrett said yesterday —

Oh, _fuck_ that. His soul’s damned already, he might as well own up to it and make sure they suffer. And good luck to whoever survives and has to live in a mansion where half of their relatives died — sure as hell they took that chance from _him_ , didn’t they?

He just hopes Jon’s doing all right, but he did ask Ygritte to at least keep an eye on him if she wanted to and she said yes, and he was doing plenty fine when he left, all things considered, so —

He’s probably worrying for nothing. He just has to get through tomorrow and then he will have his revenge and he can go back home and they’ll rebuild their life and fuck Walder Frey, his aunt and everyone involved with his family’s death.

If anything, they _will_ regret having left him alive.

Oh, they bloody fucking _will_.

——

“Robb, you really _don’t_ need to be here,” Theon says as they stand in the castle’s butchery — it’s _cold_ and it’s late and those three are lying on the slabs like the dead meat they’re about to become, and Robb appreciates the thought, but —

“I told you I wanted this to happen,” he says, “it’s be hypocritical if I wasn’t.”

“Fine,” Theon says, “but I warned you.”

“I _summoned_ you.”

“… Fair,” Theon admits, and then takes a step back from the first slab.

Then his arms aren’t _arms_ anymore.

——

“I _told_ you that you didn’t have to be inside,” Theon tells as he stands next to him minutes later outside the room.

Robb has just finished vomiting what little food he had ingested.

“No,” he says, “I had to be. And I’m going back in.”

“Robb, _don’t_ ,” Theon says, sounding worried, and that’s cute, but _no_.

“I said I wanted it, I have to watch it. And — I just, didn’t expect _that_. Now I know.”

Theon’s newly reconstructed hands touch his shoulders, squeezing, before Robb stands back up. “Fine,” he says, “but if you can’t —”

“Theon, again, I _summoned_ you, I asked for it, I’m not going to change my mind about whatever it is that we are to each other, and I’m going back in now.”

“Aren’t you stubborn,” Theon smiles, his eyes glinting gold as he walks back inside the butchery.

Robb follows.

——

“Well,” Robb admits, a while later, “it — does the trick.”

“Told you it was the best way to go at it,” Theon nods as they glance at the meat they just stored in place of what should have been some of the pork for the pies that will be served tonight.

The way Theon cut it, it’s not distinguishable from the rest, and at this point, _well_ , the kitchen staff will do the rest without knowing.

“Right. We should go and plan the rest.”

Theon nods, sticks his hands inside his pockets in a gesture way, way too human, and follows Robb out of the kitchens.

It’s almost dawn, but no one is around yet and everyone in the room Robb is staying in is sleeping still.

“So,” Robb says, “those are getting served this evening, aren’t they?”

“Yes,” Theon confirms, “and I looked into this. The bride is long gone and I can make sure that the ones who aren’t involved with your parents’s deaths don’t leave their rooms. _However_ , if I may have a few words with some of those girls before dinner and give them a more pleasurable demise —”

“Sure,” Robb says, “however you prefer.”

“Working with you is _such_ a pleasure,” Theon winks. “I imagine you would like a locked door and to make sure Frey knows it’s _you_ orchestrating his demise before meeting it?”

“I can work with that,” he agrees.

“Good. Any preferences?”

“About _how_? Not really. Why?”

“Oh, so I can eat their souls right from the source?”

“… If you want to,” Robb agrees cautiously, figuring that whatever it is it won’t change the end result.

“You are the best summoner I ever had for real,” Theon winks at him, and Robb smiles back, feeling ridiculously hopeful all over again.

Maybe he shouldn’t.

He’s way beyond caring.

——

That evening, at least five of the people who were supposed to be in the dining hall are _not_. Robb has the distinct feeling that Theon’s skin is almost _glowing_. He doesn’t ask. Instead he does his job, makes sure that all the other waiters are out of the room after pies are served and stands near the door, trying to make himself invisible.

_Any time now._

Theon is standing at the other side of the room as Frey asks again where the hell are Rhaegar, Jared and Symond, and he’s only answered with helpless shrugs.

“Well, then we’ll just start eating without them,” he says, digging into his pie.

Robb should feel disgusted, but he’s _not_.

If anything, he can’t wait for the moment he’s finally _done_.

He waits until those pies are half-eaten before he dares looking up at Theon, who winks at him again and snaps his fingers.

A moment later, the door behind Robb locks, and something _dark_ covers the windows.

“What —” Frey starts, and then half of the candles go out, and someone near Robb starts coughing blood —

Same as _almost the rest of the room_ a moment later, all except for Frey.

“What the _hell_ —”

“Not Hell,” Robb says, moving from the door and walking up to the man’s table, making sure he’s in the way of the light. “ _Me_.”

 _Then_ he hears a lot of people starting to cough behind him, but that’s not what’s important, not when Frey’s looking up at him with the face of someone who was expecting everything but what’s just happening.

“ _You_?” He croaks, a hand going to his stomach at once, as if he’s feeling cramps.

“No one else.” Robb knows he’s smiling and he knows he should feel _horrible_ about this, but he honestly can’t care less, not when Frey’s not laughing anymore and the coughing from behind him is becoming louder. “I _did_ tell you I would get my revenge,” he says, not bothering to drop his voice. “One way or the other.”

“I thought —” Frey coughs, and then _coughs_.

“What, that I was young and stupid and I could do nothing? Well, I couldn’t _on my own_. I got help.”

“ _Help_? What kind of help would — oh.” He’s staring behind Robb’s shoulder. Robb grins as he turns to look at what’s happening behind him.

He can see younger Freys after younger Freys dropping like dead weight on the tables in front of them, her faces landing into those pies. And _all_ of their necks are covered by black and gold tentacles that leave them be as soon as they die, while Theon’s leaning against the wall, in his _full_ true for, the largest one that Robb had barely glimpsed upon when he summoned him.

“ _This_ kind of help,” Theon says, his voice sounding _entirely_ more ominous than Robb remembers it being, but if he’s in his true form now, well, _it would be_. “By the way? Best deal I ever made. Your brood’s souls are a whole new level of tasty, if you ask me.”

“A — whole new level?”

“The worst people they are, the tastier,” Theon explains as he calls back most of the tentacles that were still spread all over the edge of the room before moving back towards Frey’s table. “Let me tell you, you raised an unholy amount of _terrible_ people, I hadn’t eaten that well in centuries. Oh, I should hope your nephews were equally tasty?” He asks, grinning brightly as he shrinks down slightly so he’s standing behind Robb but not _too_ much.

So, Frey throws up the entirety of his food the moment he understands what Theon meant.

Given how much spilled food Robb had to clean up these last few months thanks to him, he can’t care less.

Half of the candles go out.

“I suppose they weren’t,” Robb answers when Frey doesn’t.

“Fair enough,” Theon says, “they didn’t look like it.”

“You’re — _how_ could you —” Frey starts, coughing blood.

Robb wants to laugh. He just lets out a sad noise instead. “I don’t know, you _killed my entire family_ and because of that I risked losing what little I had left of it it, _how_ could I at least want you to feel exactly what _I_ have gone through? And honestly, I’m — if you think I’m feeling _glad_ about it, fuck you. If I could have had them back without needing to see you dead I would have taken that in a heartbeat, but they’re _gone_ and they can’t come back. And if you think I was going to let you get away with it, _fuck you_. I might’ve damned my soul, but I think I’ll see you in Hell. Hopefully a long time from now. Theon, he’s yours if you want him.”

“Oh, how _nice_ of you,” Theon grins. “You sure you don’t want to do the honors?”

“No,” Robb says. “I think I said everything I had to say. My family sends its regards,” he says, and takes a step back.

A part of him doesn’t want to watch, but _most_ of him does, and so he keeps his eyes well open and fixed on Frey as Theon reaches out for him with black and gold tentacles and engulfs him in them and he hears his neck snap.

If he feels elated, _well_ , whatever.

He’ll see Frey in Hell regardless, after all.

——

“Well,” Theon grins as he moves back and lets Frey’s dead body fall on the table, “this one job was the best I ever had, I think.”

His eyes are full gold now, his tentacles look half-gold and half-black, and he’s _glowing,_ sort of. Robb thinks he’s more turned on than scared, and it probably says all there is to say about this specific situation.

“Thank you,” Robb replies. “And now — I mean, I’ll need a ride back to London, I guess. But — what will you do?”

“ _Well_ ,” Theon says, “technically I have to go back downstairs _if_ whoever summoned me declares the job done and does the ritual.”

“Right,” Robb nods, “the one at the end of the second incantation.” Theon doesn’t sound _too_ enthusiast, though. “Wait,” Robb asks, “do you _want_ to go back downstairs?”

Theon looks at him for a long, long moment, his tentacles shrinking enough that they’re face to face now. “What if I told you the answer is… not particularly? I mean, I don’t exactly enjoy it down there and I hadn’t been out in centuries, and I admittedly _like_ you, but —”

“Well, I don’t particularly feel like sending you back downstairs,” Robb interrupts him, feeling his heart is beating so fast it’ll burst out of his chest.

“… You don’t.”

“I _definitely_ don’t,” Robb confirms. He knows he doesn’t want to. Damn, if Theon could stick around it would be _great —_ he _likes_ him, for what it’s worth, and he hasn’t actually had… anything like _this_ with anyone else.

“Well then,” Theon grins brightly, one tentacle wrapping around Robb’s waist. “We have another deal?”

“We do,” Robb says, and kisses Theon fully, Theon’s sharp teeth biting down on his lower lip before their tongues meet, and maybe he should be thinking about what the fuck he’s doing here but —

He doesn’t.

Not at all.

——

“So,” Theon asks him as they walk back home after another trip through Hell’s first level or whatever the fuck it was, “what are your plans now?”

“I was thinking,” Robb says, “that I might take it easy for a bit, maybe I’ll just go to work and check that Jon’s doing fine and then I can try to find something better, you know. _You_ could absolutely rent someplace in the same building, though.”

“I _could_ ,” Theon agrees. “I mean, we do have ways to find money. And you’ll check on your aunt?”

Robb grins and takes his keys out of his pocket. “Maybe.” If he will, it’s going to be far away from her and he doubts he’ll feel guilty about his actions. “It’s just, so liberating, you know?”

“I can imagine,” Theon says, sounding like he _can_. Robb grins back, already making plans for what he’s going to do next. Most likely check on how Jon’s doing, but he was fine when they left, so he doubts he wouldn’t be now. He walks upstairs, then figures he’ll knock so he doesn’t surprise anyone in there already.

And no one answers.

 _The hell_?

“This is weird,” he says, knocking again. “Ygritte should be _here_ , why —”

Before Theon can suggest anything, Ygritte’s door opens and she shows up looking — _relieved_?

“Oh, you’re _here_ ,” she says, sounding like she’s also worried, other than relieved. “I was wondering where the hell did you end up.”

“What — why aren’t you —”

“In your living room? And why isn’t _your brother_?” She shakes her head. “Listen, he’s at my place, but before you go in you should know a few things.”

For a moment, Robb blanches, feeling like he’s going to throw up. Was there a catch after all? Did it backfire somehow? Did he fall into a coma again? _Everything but that_.

“All right,” he says. “What happened?”

“Your aunt showed up while I was at my place getting changed and he opened the door.”

Oh, _fuck_ , Robb thinks, immediately guessing that it _can’t_ have gone well. “Shit. They _talked_?”

“More than,” Ygritte sighs. “By the time I got there, well, she was being handsy, he had pretty much thrown up everything he could possibly have kept in his stomach and I kicked her out, but he wasn’t — _fine_ at all, so I figured I’d bring him at my place and keep an eye on him there. Which is why your door’s locked, he couldn’t remember where the keys were.”

“Thank you,” he tells her immediately, so relieved he could cry. At least she was there, if she hadn’t been… “And he’s been there since…?”

“The day after you left.”

 _Fuck_. “And — what — I mean, how is he doing?”

She looks up at him, _worried_ blue eyes slightly darker than his own staring up at him. “I said I wouldn’t tell you,” she sighs, “but he _would_ end up telling you anyway without meaning it, I think, so it’s probably better that you hear it from me.”

_He didn’t want Robb to know?_

“What is it?”

“Uh, from what he said he pissed off your aunt’s husband a week before he jumped while you weren’t around, and they forced him to spend the night in some kind of storage room.”

… Robb remembers the only storage room around their mansion even too well. “Wait, the one with roaches even on the fucking ceiling?”

“Yes,” she says. “Whatever she told him, it kind of set him off so whenever he wakes up he thinks he’s back there and of course he remembers _me_ but not my name and he looks at me like I’ll throw him out for that, but that’s the least. I mean, I tried to get him to eat something but either my cooking is inedible or something’s wrong because he keeps down about half of it.”

“I’m going to —” He starts, but doesn’t say _make sure she suffers_ because hasn’t he done that already? “Never mind. Thank you, I can’t even imagine what’d have happened if you hadn’t been there,” he says, thinking of what might have happened if she actually had _not_ been there, and — no. _No_ , that’d have been so much _worse_ , he can’t even begin to consider it.

“No problem,” she says, “but I think you _really_ want to go in and tell him you haven’t left on purpose.”

He nods and walks into her house — it’s smaller than his own, and he’s been here more than once, so he knows where to go. Jon is sitting in her small living room, his knees bent so that his feet aren’t touching the floor while he sits on the armchair, and he looks _terrible —_ in between the bags under his eyes, how pale he is and how much his hands are shaking, it’s just… not good. Not good at all.

He’s going to have _words_ with his aunt, at least, but not for now.

“Jon?” He asks, putting a hand on his shoulder.

Jon looks up at him with wide, _surprised_ gray eyes that somehow make him look ten years younger than he actually is for a split moment. “Oh,” he says, “I — I thought you left.”

He says it while his voice trembles so much that Robb for a moment feels his knees falter.

“What? No,” he shakes his head, “I only was away for a few days, but of course I haven’t.”

“And you _won’t_?”

“Of course I _won’t_ ,” he answers at once, and for — Jon hasn’t _cried_ in front of him since they were kids and someone mentioned his parents not wanting him, but now he is as he latches on to his shoulders and as Robb immediately holds him back and tries to tell him he’s not going anywhere and _no_ , they don’t even have a storage room, he thinks that he should have asked Theon to give _her_ a stroke, too.

——

“So,” Theon asks him hours later, as he hands him an already filled glass of bourbon, “what’s the verdict?”

Robb shakes his head. “Bad.” He takes the glass. “At least he’s — _fine_ physically, but fuck her sideways, she’s — I don’t — he asked me where our parents were.”

Theon raises an eyebrow. “They’re _dead_?”

“Yes, and he was entirely aware of that _before_ , now — I mean, he asked that at some point and then he put two and two together while I was stalling and he threw up again. And he was apologizing for it. He was better off when he just woke up, honestly.” He downs the glass. “Fuck, I think I need another one.”

Theon pours him one without commenting any further and Robb drinks it before letting his elbows hit the table. “Shit. Well, it’s still better than when he was in a fucking coma, but — he was getting _better_ before and now he’s not and I just — I was hoping we’d go forward, you know?”

Then nods, sipping from a glass himself, except that he’s holding it with a tentacle, not with his hand. “Do you need some other disgrace to befall on your aunt?”

Another tendril wraps around Robb’s shoulders. He leans into it. “Maybe,” he sighs, “but I doubt it’d mean much at this point. What I need is turning back time before he even fell, I guess, but that’s not doable.”

“That might be a problem,” Theon agrees, but he _sounds_ strange.

“Anything wrong?” Robb asks.

“No,” Theon says, maybe a bit too quickly. “I was just thinking if someone owed me favors that might help you out, but I’m afraid that’s really not _our_ jurisdiction at all.”

Robb shakes his head, figuring that he should have expected it. “Theon, he would have never come back in the first place if not for you. I’ll have him in _any_ way, and it’s already enough that he woke up in the first place. I’ll live.”

“You _really_ are entirely too selfless for this world,” Theon smiles, but it’s a sad smile, and then he moves forward, his mouth meeting his as Theon’s legs disappear.

Robb kisses him back, relaxing as warm, _strong_ tentacles envelope his back.

If anything, at least Theon’s not going anywhere, is he?

——

Thing is: Theon lied.

Or better: he didn’t _technically_ lie, he just omitted information because he had to think on it and maybe discuss with a few acquaintances downstairs.

See, thing is: _fixing_ people is the other side’s jurisdiction. Not _theirs_. Theirs is for entire other matters and he already was walking the line when he healed that wound.

Still, there _is_ one way to circumvent that issue.

Too bad that it’s kind of a _definitive_ choice and if he went for it he could _never_ go back.

Still —

The more time he thinks about it, the more he thinks it wouldn’t be too great a sacrifice, especially given that he never liked Hell much anyway and he was hoping to stay up here as long as possible, and thing is, he _likes_ Robb, he likes him in ways he’s never liked a human or even another demon, and while he does enjoy his nature, Hell is a very lonely place and almost never being summoned doesn’t help you getting a decent contact network. Before Robb summoned him, he had stayed downstairs for a couple centuries give or take, getting bored and handling paperwork and watching his family get all the fancy jobs, and these few weeks upstairs have been… _good_ , better than he could have ever imagined. And the fact that Robb, who is exactly the kind of person _the other side_ should keep dear and on their side, actually asked him to stay and looked that relieved when he said he would… listen, a demonic entity has his weaknesses and the fact that a human who doesn’t even know what selfishness means would want him to _stay_ might be one of them.

He glances at Jon’s room, where Robb is currently holed up as he has been for the rest of the previous week, and goes towards the fireplace. It’s still going, and he takes a knife on the way before he kneels in front of it. His hand turns into a tentacle, again, and he cuts the skin with a single neat slash, letting it fall over the fire and murmuring the toned down evocation, hoping that Asha isn’t on a job somewhere because she’s about the only one in the family that would actually talk to him.

“Wow,” the fire says a moment later as it changes shape and the flames morph into a face that resembles his sister’s as much as they can, “I see that you got attached to your last human.”

“What —”

“Theon, did you forget that I can _feel_ your feelings?”

Oh. _That._ Yeah, well, disadvantages of demonic families. “Right, fair, whatever. Listen, this isn’t a social call. I need to ask you something.”

“Okay, shoot. I’m at Uncle Rodrik’s anyway, nothing to do other than listening to you.”

“Oh, great, so in case you can help me out.” Uncle Rodrik lives in one of those sections of Hell with _lore libraries_ , and he hasn’t done summoning in centuries and would rather do archivist work — honest enough, Theon always figured. “So. Let’s say I hypothetically want to use _that one spell_ , you know which one, to restore someone to —”

“Theon,” she interrupts him, “you want to use _that_ spell on your human’s brother?”

“So what if I do?” He asks, shrugging.

“Well,” she says, after a moment, “it’s not technically forbidden. I think. Let me check a moment.” The flames turn into the regular fire until they don’t anymore a few minutes later. “Right,” she says, “according to Uncle Rodrik’s grimoire, it’s acceptable. And it would work.”

“No setbacks or possible counter-indications?”

“… No,” she says. “It would fit exactly the required conditions. But, well, _you know_.”

“Of course I know,” Theon says.

“ _Right._ Then it would work but _that_ one thing would happen and you know it. Are you _really_ sure it’s worth it?”

Yeah, _is he?_ He glances out of the living room, towards the one where he can hear Jon sobbing as he says that he _hates_ feeling roaches crawl along his back one moment and then cursing for having opened that door, and thing is, when he says _that_ , it’s obviously when he’s entirely aware of how badly his thrice-darned aunt set him back.

Robb’s eyes as he looks at him are a dull, sad blue. And Theon _really_ liked it better when they weren’t.

And — he’d have stayed anyway, right?

“What if I think it is?” He replies, quietly, so that no one might hear him.

“It’s your decision,” Asha says. “We’ve been around for centuries, it’s up to you and I wouldn’t presume to tell you any better. Mother did the same, after all, and she never regretted it. If you really do it, well, you know how to call me if you need me, and we’ll see each other when we do if you don’t. But just — think about it before you go for it. All right?”

As if he _hasn’t_ thought about this. “All right,” he says. “But I think I already know the answer. Thank you.”

She shrugs and then disappears into a swirl of flames.

Theon stands up.

He has to find a few things before he attempts to do what he wants to.

——

When Robb closes the door behind him, not having noticed that Theon has left the house and come back meanwhile, he looks exhausted.

“How is he doing?” Theon asks, already knowing the answer.

“Worse,” Robb sighs. “I mean, it’s worse if he actually realizes that things should be better. And if he doesn’t he keeps on talking about that damned room full of cockroaches.” He sounds _weary_. “I hope he’ll get better, but it’s been a week. It got just… worse,” he says, helplessly, and before Theon knows it, he’s let a tendril slip from his leg towards Robb’s face.

He wants to ask, _what if I told you that there was a way to fix him_.

Except that then Robb would ask _what_ , and he’s not so sure he’d let Theon go through with it. “Just entertain me,” he asks instead. “If your aunt hadn’t happened and he was — as before. What would you be doing now?”

Robb laughs, bitterly. “Probably having fun with you downstairs, planning a holiday and enjoying my Frey-free life. Why?”

“And would you go alone on that holiday?” He asks.

“‘Course not,” he says. “I’d definitely bring you with.” He sounds _fond_ now, his hands around the tentacles Theon’s wrapping around his frame and his mouth near Theon’s, so _near_ , and then he moves forward and kisses him as if he would any other human. “If you’d like.”

“Robb, of course I _would like_ ,” he says. “And I think you need to get some sleep.”

“I should go back in,” he says. “I said I would go get a glass of water, but —”

“Wait. He’s awake?”

“He is. Why?”

“Never mind. Go get that water and take fifteen, I can stay with him.”

“You don’t have to —”

“ _Fifteen_ , Robb.”

“All right, all right, I’m going,” Robb says, and Theon lets him go for — well, they shall see.

He smiles at Robb’s back as he heads into the kitchen, then he calls back his tentacles and walks inside Jon’s room.

 _Well then_.

——

Jon, at least, looks _very much_ pained, but his eyes are clear-ish when he looks at Theon as he closes the door. He’s lying down on that cot with his knees pressed to his chest and looking like he has the headache of all headaches and looking at least a couple years younger than he actually is.

“Hey,” Theon says. “How are you holding up?”

Jon lets out a half-aborted laugh. “I don’t —” He starts. His hands are shaking around his legs. “Everything feels _wrong_ and I know it _shouldn’t_ ,” he says. “I know I shouldn’t be like _this_ ,” he says, sounding literally pained as he curls closer on himself, “but — it just — _shit_.” He jerks on himself, obviously searching for something that’s not _there_ on his legs.

“Shit, shit, _shit_ ,” he says, “this isn’t — I’m _tired_ ,” he sobs, not quite looking at him.

Theon can believe he is.

“What if I told you,” he says, “that there’s a way to fix it?”

“… Fix it…?” Jon whispers, his grey eyes staring up at him in the candlelight.

“Yes,” Theon says, standing up and moving closer to the bed. “There is.” _And you won’t remember any of it, if I do it right_.

Then again, it’s not really that complicated. He reaches down into the small bag he had ready — there’s a few pomegranate seeds, which were fucking _hard_ to find, a silver knife, a small silver plate.

It _is_ an easy spell.

“How — with _that_?” Jon asks, not sounding too sure of it.

“Sure,” Theon says, and Jon most likely doesn’t hear the lock turning. Then again, Robb is most likely sleeping on the kitchen table because Theon _did_ enchant his glass before, so no one should disturb this. “Let me ask you something. What kind of lawyer did you assume I was?”

Jon shakes his head, obviously not getting it.

Theon grins and shrugs, turning into his true form in _moderate_ dimensions — it’s not like Jon’s going to remember it _after_ , if it all goes as it should, but no point in making him freak out.

Jon’s eyes go _wider_ , his mouth parting in surprise. “What — what did he _do_?” He asks, with a flebile, thin voice.

“Oh, your brother summoned me, but it was a mutually beneficial arrangement.” He moves closer. “And if you do _exactly_ as I say, tomorrow morning you’ll be good as new.”

“Will I?” Jon is looking at him as if he kind of wishes he could take his eyes off him but _can’t_ , his lips parted. “ _Will I_?” He sounds almost too hopeful.

“Sure,” Theon says. “And it’s easy. Real easy. Only takes a few minutes.”

Jon’s shaking hand slightly touches one of the tentacles grasping the side of the bed. “You can really make it go away?”

“I can,” Theon says.

… Maybe, _maybe_ he should just be fully straight with him, for that matter. “And if you want, you won’t have to remember this last week.”

“Can you _do_ that?” Jon sounds so awed, it would be almost flattering.

“I can, but that’s up to you.”

“What — what if I don’t want to remember it?”

“Then you won’t. So, should we?”

“ _Please_ ,” Jon nods, his grey eyes tearing up, his hands shaking harder.

Very well —

“Wait,” he says, his voice becoming even shakier. “If I forgot, I’d — I’d forget _her_ , too.”

 _Her_ — oh, Ygritte.

“ _Her_?” He asks for confirmation. Jon scrunches his eyes and shakes his head with an angry motion, biting down on his lip hard enough that it bleeds.

“ _Her_. I — I _hate_ that I never remember her name and I _want_ to but it just won’t stick and I don’t want to forget the rest.” He sounds like he’s about to cry all over again and Theon could make a few jokes about it, but it’s — probably not the moment.

“All right. Then I’m not doing it. You’ll remember it. Deal?”

“Deal,” Jon says, quickly, not even noticing that there’s some drops of his own blood staining his chin.

“Hey,” he says, “this won’t work if you’re that agitated. It’s gonna be over in five minutes, so how about you take a breath or ten and calm down?”

Jon obviously tries to, breathing in and out, and at that point Theon lets the tentacle he was tentatively touching before wrap around his wrist loosely — at least maybe if he’s worried about _that_ , he won’t think about how _wrong_ is his entire situation right now.

It does seem to work, so while Jon stares down at his tentacle, Theon reaches on the floor, taking the silver plate with the pomegranate inside it. He places it on the bed, then takes the knife and murmurs the incantation slowly as he cuts the piece of fruit in two. He discards one half. Jon stares at him without moving his eyes.

“I need your hand,” Theon says, and Jon holds it out at once. He grabs his wrist steadily, cuts shallowly his palm, lets Jon’s blood fall on the piece of fruit as well as he murmurs, and a moment later the pomegranate flashes gold for one second before it resembles a piece of fruit stained in blood again.

All right.

“Thank you,” he says, and then grasps it and eats it, letting the juice flow in the back of his throat, and if it tastes _slightly_ metallic, well, that was the entire point of it.

He swallows, and lets it rest for a moment.

“Very well,” he says, then moves a tendril behind Jon’s head, _right_ where he healed him before. He raises up his free hand, and cuts the palm with that same silver knife. A slight line of black blood flows along it. “I need you to drink from here, and look at me while you do.”

Jon gives him a tiny nod before he opens his mouth and _does_ , and Theon can see his throat working as he swallows, and Theon doesn’t know exactly _how much_ he should have because it’s not like he ever did this before and sure as hell you can only do it _once_ , but he should feel it, from what he’s heard from his mother centuries ago, so he doesn’t stop him until he feels a spasm running along his spine and suddenly _something_ feels different — he feels a stab of pain in the back of his head and Jon’s gray eyes suddenly turn gold.

 _Right_.

That was it.

See, the thing is: demons do have magic inside them which they can only use for the reasons they’re allowed to. As in, _demonic_ things. You can’t heal people or bring them back to life or any such thing, yourself.

With _one_ exception.

Or better: _the other side_ can actually heal people and bring them back just like that, for nothing, and they don’t do it because _of course_ they’re the stuck-up pricks that they’ve always been and only want prayers and unconditional faith. At least his side earns it. Anyway, as a single demon who might want to do that, you cannot, because it’s a _selfless_ act, in theory, and selflessness is not what demons are about, nor what their magic is about.

Unless, of course, you _willingly give it up_.

But he’s fairly sure that he won’t regret doing it.

(After all, his mother never had. He’d know — she did summon him to talk from time to time. And he saw her getting older and _happier_ as she lived her human life with a man who admittedly treated her so much better than his father ever had, he could never resent her for taking that decision.

What would she say now? She’d probably encourage him to do it.)

Now.

They’re connected, for bad or good, and he has to finish this — he closes his eyes, tries to concentrate.

“Jon,” he says, trying to make sure he sounds calm and collected. Jon stares at him with another tiny nod, his mouth smeared with black blood and his eyes glowing gold. “In a moment this will be over and you’ll be back to usual. But you _won’t_ remember this ever happened. You _won’t_ remember what I am. Do you understand?”

He nods.

“Good, but I need you to _tell_ me.”

“I — will be back to usual. I won’t remember this. I won’t remember you.” He sounds extremely detached, but — Theon _thinks_ that’s how this whole thing is supposed to work, so… good.

“Very well,” Theon says. “It’s going to be just a moment.” _Hopefully painless_. Then he thinks, _cure him_ , as he says the final word to complete this.

A moment later, _both_ of them are glowing gold and Theon’s entire body feels on fire and fine, maybe it’ll be painless for Jon and not for _him_ , but never mind that — he grits his teeth and feels magic flow through him and _outside_ him as his lower half shrinks back into regular human legs and hips and waist and until there’s no gold tint to his skin nor to Jon’s, just behind his eyes, but after Theon moves his hand away from Jon’s head the gold also leaves, leaving way to the usual gray, and a moment later Jon closes them and falls asleep at once.

Well, for _now_ , that’s — pretty much how it should have gone, Theon thinks. Jon’s breathing evenly, and then Theon realizes that _he_ should now, damn it, and inhales air into his lungs out of necessity for the first time in his entire existence.

Uh.

He’ll have to remember it. He also thinks he’s feeling hungry in ways he hadn’t _before_ , but before doing anything else, he grabs a piece of cloth from the nightstand, uses it to clean the black blood still sticking to Jon’s mouth and then burns it as soon as he gets into the living room. Robb is dead to the world in the kitchen, his head on the table, and Theon smiles not too sadly as he finds a few apples in the cupboard.

He eats one and decides that it tastes good.

Very good.

Tomorrow morning he’ll know for sure if he did something horribly wrong or not, but for now — he thinks he won’t mind being human too much, after all.

——

When Robb opens his eyes, it’s morning.

 _Shit_ , did he fall asleep on the kitchen table? He probably did —

Oh, _fuck_ , he thinks, immediately kicking the chair away as he stands up. He told Jon he’d be right back and he _didn’t_ and fine, Theon was there but he doubts that it might have helped beyond some half hour. He runs out of the kitchen and towards the bedroom, but when he opens the door, Jon is — sleeping? Regularly? Without tossing or turning or anything of the kind.

That would be the first time it happens since they came back.

He swallows, figuring that maybe he dodged this one bullet now. He moves beyond the door, and — wait, is Jon looking… _better_? He doesn’t even know how he can see that, but maybe it’s that he’s not… obviously tense?

What the hell is going on? He figures he’s not going to wake him up but then his foot hits a piece in the wooden floor that always makes noise if you walk on it and that’s enough — Jon groans, stirring awake, and Robb’s about ready for anything while telling himself _I hope he hasn’t gotten any worse_.

Surely, the last thing he expected was for Jon to blink as he sat up, turn towards him with perfectly clear eyes and a fairly _surprised_ face and looking… exactly the way he did before he jumped from the damned window, all things considered.

“Robb?” He asks. He sounds — like he actually did back then.

“Yes?” Robb replies, cautiously.

“I — this is weird,” he says. “I — wow, _what the hell_ was going on this last week?”

… _What_?

“What — what do you mean?”

“I — I remember it, but it just… doesn’t make sense? Actually most of this month is just — I feel great now actually, did you call a doctor or _something_ that I don’t remember?”

Robb shakes his head minutely. “No,” he says, dropping on Jon’s bedside, putting a hand on his shoulder. “I didn’t. But — how are you _really_ feeling?”

“All right?” He asks, shrugging. “Everything is fine. I mean, it _feels_ fine. Wait,” he says, and reaches for some book Robb kept on his nightstand that _he_ used to read while sitting with him — thankfully it’s some novel and not a necromancy treaty. He opens it, then whistles, lowly. “Wow,” he says, “I — I couldn’t really read anything _before_.”

“… Why didn’t you say —”

“I didn’t want you to worry,” Jon interrupts him. “But — it’s back now. Fuck. Robb, _what_ did you do?”

“I swear,” he says, “ _this time_ , I did exactly nothing.”

“And I’m supposed to think my, uh, _issues_ got fixed overnight on their own?”

… Fair, Robb figures. “I have no idea,” he admits. “But — well, I mean, if they’re fixed, it’s a good thing, right?”

Jon nods. “I — I guess so,” he breathes, sounding elated.

“But — what’s the last thing you remember from last night?” Robb asks.

He shakes his head. “You went to get some water, I think? And then I fell asleep.”

Robb nods, and then his eyes fall to the sheets.

There’s a black stain on them. That looks _golden_ if the light hits it the right way.

And — Theon said he _would_ stay with him, didn’t he?

“You know what,” Robb says, “I think that whatever happened, it was a good thing and you _really_ deserve to give it a rest, so how about we go get breakfast later? It’s dawn, I woke you up way too early.”

Jon smiles, the same way he used to back when their parents were still alive. “Sure. I’d like that,” he says, and then he turns on his back and he’s asleep again. Robb can’t freaking believe his own eyes.

He leaves him to sleep and goes towards the living room, figuring that he’ll get a few answers out of Theon. He _must_ have done something, because otherwise it doesn’t add up. Not _at all_.

Except that then he walks inside the living room and finds Theon _sleeping_ on the sofa.

Legitimately sleeping.

When he never did it before, and he’s _breathing_ , and there’s something about him that doesn’t scream _otherworldly_ anymore —

What the _fuck_ has he done?

——

Theon’s woken up a moment later by someone shaking him. Hard.

Then he looks up into Robb’s angry, _teary_ blue eyes.

“What did you _do_?” Robb asks, sounding like he’s devastated.

Ah.

So he _did_ figure it out.

“Oh, I fixed your brother. I just had to give _something_ up to do it, but —”

“What exactly is _something_?”

“… Well, I’m human now, but —”

Robb’s eyes go horrified as he shakes his head all over again.

“Theon, _your nature_ is not _just something_! I never asked you for —”

He sounds so _angry_ about it, Theon’s honestly flattered that he would. And it’s not doing anything to make him regret his actions.

“Listen,” Theon tells him, “I thought about it. And — I knew it’d be worth it because _my mother_ did, too, and this whole situation was just… sounding eerily similar.”

“… Your _mother_?”

“Hey, us demons do have families! Anyway, I should probably tell you the entire story, so you get what I mean. My mother, let’s just say that she hated Hell. I mean, she didn’t _know_ she did, but my father’s always been the _worst_ since the beginning of our existence, and as stated, we were around in Ancient Greece, thank you very much, and she wasn’t usually summoned because female demons aren’t, well, _in the books_. Either they get summoned for menial revenges by other women who then get extremely bad reputation or they are called because the system matches requests without names, same as it did for the two of us. Anyway, my mother was summoned for the first time in centuries a while ago. I think it was your Middle Ages. And it was a summon exactly like yours.”

“Where they just asked _what they needed_ out of the demon?”

“Yes. So, it was this minor lord of some island whose daughter was — well, ugly. I mean, _real_ ugly. Outside, because from what I saw of her when my mother summoned me to _talk_ later, she was as good a person as it goes inside. So, the guy summons her because he’s desperate and he’s afraid she’ll die alone when she deserves better and asks my mother if she can turn his daughter beautiful. But _that_ is not a thing we can do, as you noticed.”

“I figure. So?”

“So, since she was in no hurry to go back downstairs, she tells him she’ll stick around and see if they can find some other way to help his daughter. What was the name — right, Brienne. So this Brienne was really not good looking _but_ she was great at sword fighting and the likes, and she really wanted to be a knight, and no one took her seriously, so my mother goes up to her father and asks him to host a tourney for her eighteenth birthday — mostly _men_ would attend and if she was allowed to participate then someone not completely idiotic might notice her. The man decides it’s a great idea and they start planning the whole thing and — well, he was a very good-looking guy, _objectively_ , because there’s a limit to everything, and he was fairly kind and laid back and, well, everything my bastard of a father isn’t, and I think she started falling for him and viceversa. I mean, I don’t know how it went because I wasn’t there, but she was there for six months before that tourney happened and by the time it did, well, they definitely were lovers. Same way you and I are.”

“Sounds intriguing. Go on.”

“Right, so, they finally hold the tourney and of course Brienne participates openly. Other people come because even if they couldn’t care less for her it still was a tourney. Fights happen, and in the end she faces in the final round this guy Jaime _something_ , he was from a fairly rich and powerful family but cared more for knightly things than for succeeding his father and hadn’t done a tourney in ages, so he had come and signed up. So, he participates, they fight and he wins, but only _barely_ , and he tells her that it’s a damned pity that she’s stationed on that island, and why wasn’t she going around doing knightly deeds instead of wasting time there? Anyway, they start talking, and he decides he’s intrigued and that he’s going to stay for a while also because the prize was _whatever the winner wishes for_ and he had to decide, and he said he didn’t want any money because he already had more than enough. So he stays a while, they talk, turns out they actually have common interests, of course, and he seems to be at least very much intrigued and she can’t believe it, and everything looks great except that this guy has a twin sister named Cersei who’s completely out of her mind _and_ actually was in a relationship with him.”

“His _twin sister_?”

“Well, not judging in _theory_ because I mean, you see where I come from, but according to what my mother had to say she was a downright self-centered asshole who thought he was her property and he actually went to that tourney because they had a fight and he wanted to be away from her and she wouldn’t let him. So, Cersei shows up on the island after he hasn’t come back for too long, and she doesn’t like that he’s talking to another woman never mind an _ugly_ one, and she tries to ruin things for them but that doesn’t work. Long story short, turns out that she’s sure that she and her brother should die _together_ as in, one kills the other and then themselves, because they were born together and meant to die together and the likes.”

“What the _fuck_?”

“Honestly, she’d have made the best or worst demon in existence. So, when it turns out that her brother is _actually_ into Brienne and is thinking of cashing on that tourney prize by asking for her hand, and that after a few months away from Cersei he’s seen the difference and he doesn’t want her back, she decides to take the matter into her own hands.”

“ _What_?”

“She tried to kill him and then herself, except that she missed the right place she should have stabbed him in to make sure he’d die instantly, and so he was left bleeding out from someplace where — well, nothing could be done _technically_ but it’d have taken him a while to actually die. They all get there, Brienne is inconsolable and he’s dying in her arms and… well, my mother decides that she doesn’t really want to go back downstairs after all, not when she found someone she _genuinely_ likes and viceversa, and if she wants to be human _and_ do the job she was summoned for there’s a quick and easy way to accomplish both, so she does exactly what I just did with your brother.”

“You mean —”

“You _can_ do something like curing someone’s illness or save their life magically and so on. _Once_. But it burns all your magic and then you’re — well, human. She healed him, the man lived and they all lived fairly happy lives after she turned human. And imagine that, she didn’t even come back downstairs after she died.” She looked happy as a human, Theon remembers. She always smiled when she summoned him. She never smiled downstairs, not for centuries until that summon.

“Oh. So —”

“She was — a good _person_ , I guess. And she never liked Hell. Fair enough, it’s a bore. But I did visit her throughout her life. She was happy, _really_ happy, the way she had never been downstairs. And she told me that if one day I should find someone that was worth more than anything else the same way _she_ did, well, I shouldn’t think about it twice.”

Robb just _stares_ at him, and then drops on the sofa next to him, shaking his head and taking in deep breaths, and when he looks at Theon again —

“Robb, _honest_ , you’re taking it a lot worse than I did, unless you _really_ liked the tentacles more —”

“You _asshole_ ,” Robb interrupts him, snorting through the tears covering his cheeks, “the tentacles were beautiful but I liked them because they were _you_ ,” he goes on. “I _didn’t_ , I just — I never would have wanted you to give it all up for me.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Theon keeps on, “I think I won’t regret it. She — she did explain me how it felt, you know.”

“What, being in love?”

“Yes. I thought it was — it sounded good, but I’d never get it. And — I think I do now, so… fine, I’m human. You’re not so bad. I think I can live with it. Especially if it means you have years to make sure I don’t regret it.”

At _that_ , Robb hastily wipes his eyes and immediately moves on top of him, his hands going to Theon’s very human face, looking into his dark, very human eyes. “Oh,” he says, “believe me, I’m going to make _thoroughly_ sure you don’t, and by the way, you’re invited when I finally can take a vacation.”

“Nice,” Theon grins, “you think you want to start now? I have a feeling I will like finding out how human sex feels like.”

“You’re an _ass_ ,” Robb grins, “but _of course_ I will.”

Then he leans down and kisses him, and now he understands what humans mean by morning breath, but it doesn’t matter, not as Robb kisses him with enough strength to pin him down to the sofa, again, and _again_ , and Theon —

Theon thinks that he doesn’t regret his choices at all.

 

_Epilogue_

 

 _Well,_ Jon thinks, _I think that breakfast isn’t happening_.

Not that he hadn’t _suspected_ — as, well, as fucked up as things had been before, he had noticed that whatever Robb was doing with the _lawyer_ , they most likely weren’t just friendly. And if they are, well, who is Jon to tell him different? Given what Robb has given up for _him_ he would be an ungrateful bastard if he cared, and anyway who ever even cared about _that_? Oh, sure, he’s heard that it’s wrong in church for his entire life, but he hasn’t believed in God for a very, very long time, so that’s nowhere near what he’s worried about right now.

 _However_ , Robb and _Theon_ are currently engaged in supposedly pleasant activities in the living room, and so that breakfast is _definitely_ not happening, and — fine. He thinks he’ll take a walk, he missed it. He missed fresh air, he missed being fully aware of his surroundings. He missed a lot.

He closes the door softly behind him, then walks out in the hallway and —

His eyes fall on the door in front of theirs.

Oh. _Right_.

He swallows, thinking of bright red hair and rough hands that were so very gentle as they carded through his hair or held him up while trying to get him to at least drink some water, and —

Fuck. He _still_ can’t remember her damned name, and she’s told him _every fucking other day_ , and he feels like a complete idiot, but — whatever went _right_ , he supposes it didn’t include that specific notion.

Of course it didn’t. Damn, he feels like he should go introduce himself on principle, especially because he _liked_ being around her, and he liked how she smiled at him or never made him feel like something was _wrong_ with him —

 _Ah, to hell with it_ , he thinks, and knocks on her door.

She opens it a moment later. “That deadline was —” She starts, and then stops at once. Her eyes look up into his, and he knows he’s probably smiling so awkwardly it’s a miracle she doesn’t cringe at once. “Jon,” she says, and wait, she sounds… _delighted_? “Nice to see you up and about.”

“Thanks,” he says, hoping it doesn’t sound… weird. “I just — uhm, as you can see, I have no idea what happened but it seems like I’m… fine? I guess.”

“ _Fine_? No hands shaking anymore?”

“You’re entirely too nice mentioning _only_ that, but no. And I can read again, apparently. And — well. I slept pretty well last night, even if the one before was — bad.”

“I think I heard you,” she says, her eyes going darker with concern. Damn.

“… Sorry about that.”

“You couldn’t have helped it,” she says. “And are you _sure_ some doctor didn’t see you?”

“I asked Robb the same thing but he swears it’s not the case.”

“Hm.” She glances at their door. “If _Robb_ says so,” she agrees. “But well, whatever, good to see you back in your best shape then.”

“Yeah, well, I guess. I mean, I don’t know if it was that much of one, but —”

“Is this about your aunt?”

… Well, shit, he _did_ tell her, didn’t he?

“Probably,” he admits.

“Well,” she says, “what I saw _before_ when you weren’t… at your best wasn’t so bad, so I think I’m interested in seeing how you are _at your best_.”

“Right. Before anything else —” Shit, he has to tell her. He has to. “This is embarrassing. This is _fucking_ embarrassing. But — well, whatever fixed what was wrong with me, it didn’t fix… _that_ one thing. I mean, I remember everything else, but —”

“ _That_ — oh,” she grins, and _why_ doesn’t she look angry? “So you’ve shown up on my door ‘cause you liked me _that_ much even if you didn’t remember —”

He’s fairly sure he’s blushing as red as her hair, _at least_. “No, but I swear that this is the last time I ask you,” he says, not even trying to hide how mortified he’s feeling.

“I didn’t mind before,” she answers, “but that’s Ygritte to you. And stop looking _that_ flustered, _now_ I have reason to get offended if you forget it again.”

“I don’t think I will,” he says, relieved. He’s _not_ , damn it. Not when he _hated_ that he couldn’t recall it every damned time. “Well, thank you. I just —”

“What were you doing out here, by the way?”

He clears his throat. “Uh, remember when you asked me if I thought Robb and _his lawyer_ had… something going on?”

“Oh, so now it’s… _going on_ inside the house?”

“Yes,” he confirms. “So — I figured I’d go out for some fresh air, and then I realized you had to be in. But I wasn’t doing — anything else, I guess.”

She hums something under her breath, then looks up at him again with those nice blue eyes of hers. “Tell you what,” she says, “just before your aunt so nicely crashed the party, we _were_ going to have dinner together, weren’t we?”

“We were,” he sighs, wishing they _had_. It would have been… vastly better than what happened _after_.

“We could make it breakfast. And then you could get in there and give me a hand with that dress because I have a deadline tomorrow.”

“I can’t do embroidery.”

“You can help in other ways. So?”

She’s smiling but it’s not so self-assured, as if she’s not taking for granted that he’ll say yes and she’s entirely fine if he says no, and hell, let’s be real, he came here because he _did_ want to talk to her, and he thinks he likes her way more than he’s ever liked anyone that wasn’t related to him, and if he thinks about her hands on his face —

“Sure,” he agrees. “I doubt those two will notice I’m gone for a while. Uh, I don’t have money on me, but —”

“I think I can afford paying for once.” She winks at him, getting out of the door and locking it, and — oh. They’re doing it, it’s happening, did he actually _do it_ —

Her fingers tentatively grasp his burned ones.

“So, should we?” She asks, her hand not moving an inch.

He tentatively holds it back, threading their fingers together. He can’t even believe it’s happening but he _likes_ her, he did from before, too, and he hadn’t thought she’d even look at him beyond paying Robb a favor, but — well. If she does — then he thinks he wants it, too. Whatever _it_ ends up being.

“Yes,” he says, following her when she declares she knows a nice place.

He has no idea of what happened, he really doesn’t, and he doesn’t know how he suddenly got better in the span of one night, and he’s aware he lucked out, and —

He’s got a second chance at _this_ , whatever it is, when most other people wouldn’t have. He’s not going to waste it.

He’s really, really _not_.

 

 

End.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can probably blame 90% of what happened in here to the fact that I spent 80% of the time writing this with Nick Cave's _The Carny_ on repeat. Friendly advice: don't do it at home, especially not post midnight. And with this I'll _really_ saunter not so vaguely back downwards, in an extremely appropriate way at this point.

**Author's Note:**

> See you hopefully on Halloween for part two ;)


End file.
